How can I donate samples?
If you are taking part in a clinical study at the Medical University of Vienna, it may be necessary to collect blood, tissue, or other body fluids from you as part of your treatment or diagnosis.
Before anything is collected, the medical staff will explain everything to you and ask for your permission. Only if you agree, your samples will be used for research.
To make these samples available for future research, they will be stored safely in a biobank.
How will my donation be used?
The biological material is used in biomedical research to help prevent, detect, and treat specific diseases. A single sample can be used for different research purposes in the future. Often, at the time of donation, it is not yet known exactly how the sample will be used.
When you donate biological material, it is first processed and then stored in the biobank. These special processing steps help preserve the material for a long period of time. If, later on, researchers start a new project or are looking for samples that meet specific criteria, they can ask the biobank if suitable material is available.
If such material is available, the research project must first be approved by the responsible ethics committee, which ensures that there are no ethical concerns. After that, the scientific advisory board of the biobank must also give its approval before the samples can be released.
This process ensures that your donated samples are handled with care and respect. By supporting research in this way, you help make it possible to develop new therapies and improve future patient care.
Is my personal data protected?
By law, the biobank is required to protect all information related to the samples and associated data from unauthorized access at all times.
In addition to the biological samples, certain personal information such as age, date of birth, and sex is stored at the biobank. This data is encrypted (pseudonymized) and stored in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
Only the encrypted version of the samples and data (i.e., without any direct link to you as a person) is used for research purposes.