Biobanking FAQs

Q. What types of technology are used to store all of this data. How much data is it? What kind of processors/equipment is used to analyze the data? How does it capture the data?

A. The spectrum of biobanks varies widely depending on their scope and the types of research they are supporting. The two critical factors that determine how much data they generate depends largely on two factors: 1) how many samples are part of the biobank, and 2) what kinds of molecular data is being generated to support the research endeavor.

Biobanks can range from as few as 10 or 50 samples for a very specific study, to hundreds of thousands of samples for a prospective, large-scale biobanking initiative.

Biobanking research focused on molecular data can generate multiple terabytes daily. For example, some proteomics labs are generating 2-4 TB a day already, and this data intensity is expected to grow as the number of samples increase with high-throughput processing.