BioBank represents excellent resource
A top health story of April was the opening of the UK Biobank, which provides researchers with access to an enormous health resource. Over 10 years, the detailed medical records of 500,000 volunteers has been gathered, taking up 20 terabytes of stored data, and it is now open.
Created in the UK because of the NHS allowing easy access to all the records (in contrast to the privatised systems elsewhere in the world), UK Biobank is open to any researchers on the basis that any tests they do on the samples or information will then be added to the Biobank and available for all subsequent users.
It represents a lot of planning and collaboration between numerous organisations and departments, but presents the researchers of today with a unique collection of data, that is hoped will be used to track diseases and contribute to the development of preventative and curative treatments
