BACKGROUND Biobanks ensure the long-term storage and accessibility of biospecimens and corresponding data sets. Thus, they form the foundation for many research projects which may contribute to improving medical care. With the establishment of the German Biobank Node and Alliance, expertise in biobanking is bundled and strengthened. An important component within this research infrastructure is the set-up of an information technology (IT) network for allowing feasibility requests across individual biobanks. OBJECTIVE We aim to describe relevant aspects that have shaped the journey to interconnect biobanks, to enhance their visibility within the research-community, to harmonize data, and to enable feasibility searches to support access to available data and biosamples. METHODS To achieve this task, we resorted to a wide variety of methods: we ran a requirement analysis, decided on the mode of operation for the federated team of IT-developers and on the development approach itself, took related national and international initiatives into account, and concluded with evaluations of the developed software artefacts and the operation of the entire chain of applications. RESULTS We drew an IT framework including all heterogeneous data aspects derived from our requirement analysis and developed a comprehensive IT infrastructure. The successful implementation benefited from a smooth interaction of a federated IT team distributed across all participating sites that was even able to manage a major technology change mid-project. Authentication and project management services from associated partners could be integrated and the graphic user interface for an intuitive search tool for biospecimens was designed iteratively. The developed code is open source to ensure sustainability and the local implementation is concluded and functioning. The evaluation of the components was positive. CONCLUSIONS The entire project had given ample opportunity for challenges, predictable and unpredictable-from the mode of operation to changing some of the initial ideas. We learned our lessons concerning personnel, budget planning and technical as well as manual monitoring as well as some requirements arising only during the process of the project. Nevertheless, we can here report a success story of a network infrastructure, highly agile and much easier in local installation than initially anticipated.

中文翻译：

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在德国生物银行联盟内建立 IT 基础设施的旅程。

背景生物库确保生物样本和相应数据集的长期存储和可访问性。因此，它们构成了许多可能有助于改善医疗保健的研究项目的基础。随着德国生物样本库节点和联盟的建立，生物样本库的专业知识得到了捆绑和加强。该研究基础设施中的一个重要组成部分是建立信息技术 (IT) 网络，以允许跨单个生物库的可行性请求。目标 我们的目标是描述相关方面，这些方面已经塑造了连接生物库的旅程，以提高它们在研究社区中的知名度，协调数据，并启用可行性搜索以支持对可用数据和生物样本的访问。方法为了完成这项任务，我们采用了多种方法：我们进行了需求分析，决定了 IT 开发人员联合团队的操作模式和开发方法本身，考虑了相关的国家和国际倡议，最后评估了开发的软件工件和运行整个应用链。结果 我们绘制了一个 IT 框架，包括从我们的需求分析中得出的所有异构数据方面，并开发了一个全面的 IT 基础架构。成功实施得益于分布在所有参与站点的联合 IT 团队的顺畅交互，该团队甚至能够在项目中期管理重大技术变更。可以集成来自相关合作伙伴的身份验证和项目管理服务，并反复设计用于生物样本的直观搜索工具的图形用户界面。开发的代码是开源的，以确保可持续性，本地实施已结束并正常运行。对组件的评价是积极的。结论 整个项目为挑战提供了充足的机会，可预测的和不可预测的——从操作模式到改变一些最初的想法。我们吸取了有关人员、预算规划和技术以及手动监控以及仅在项目过程中出现的一些要求方面的经验教训。尽管如此，我们可以在这里报告一个网络基础设施的成功故事，