Biobanks and public health: a new challenge for public engagement and trust.

Modern biobanks should be considered as important structural platforms for the sharing of samples and data, providing benefits that go beyond those of a single study. To increase the impact of biobanking on feasible strategies to protect and improve people’s health, it could be useful to increase awareness about biobanks’ research potential in the overall scientific community, as well as promoting collaboration among different fields of expertise. The basis for the involvement of biobanks in public health have already been partly built up, emphasising the synergy in organising efforts and the openness to infrastructure collaboration, to ensure reliable long-term funding and resource sharing for the good of all. To obtain the maximum benefits possible from biobanks, which currently constitute a set of heterogeneous structures, a strategy of coordinated governance is needed, based on harmonisation of different aspects, built on the consensus of all stakeholders involved and society at large. It is important that researchers strive to understand public attitudes in this biobanking involvment so that the relationships between public trust in biobanking, donors behaviours and support for public-health involvement in the health-care system can be better understood.