A single point of contact for all public Finnish biobanks and their data

Finnish biobanks offer phenotypic data, genotype data, and much more

Vast amounts of data in Finnish biobanks are waiting to be discovered by researchers. The sample-related data at the six hospital biobanks originate mostly from the longitudinal electronic health records. Numerous research studies contribute to the continuous accumulation of both phenotypic and genotypic information in biobanks because projects return their enriched data to the biobanks.

You can view Finnish biobank sample and data collections at aggregate level here. By registering, you can submit a feasibility request for more detailed information about the sample and data availability.

The nationwide THL Biobank and Arctic Biobank host population and disease-specific research cohorts. The sample-related data collected includes a large amount of demographic, genomic, metabolomic, laboratory as well as lifestyle data obtained from sample donors.

Phenotypic data

Healthcare data

The healthcare data available at the hospital biobanks originate mostly from longitudinal electronic health records (EHR). EHR data include demographic data, such as date of birth, gender, time and cause of death, and clinical data, such as diagnoses, laboratory tests and their result values, procedures (such as imaging) and the recorded results, imaging data, and hospital-administered and prescribed medications.

Survey data

Some biobanks have data from different types of questionnaire-based surveys. These data can originate from both patient-reported outcome surveys, such as surveys on lifestyle or psychosocial well-being, or surveys executed by healthcare professionals, such as cognitive tests.

Omics data

The vast majority of omics data in the Finnish biobanks is genotype data returned to the biobanks from the projects that have genetically analyzed the biobank samples. In addition to genomics, other omics data, such as metabolomics, returned from research studies is available at some of the biobanks, in particular THL Biobank.

Genotype data

Most of the genetic data in Finnish biobanks currently is imputed genotype data returned from a nationwide genome-wide association study (GWAS), FinnGen. In 2017, Finnish biobanks joined forces in FinnGen to advance personalized medicine. All sample-related genome data will return to the originating biobank where it can be further used in subsequent biobank projects.

The returned data provides the basis for new biomedical studies as well as industrial partnerships, drug trials, monitoring studies and other public-private projects. For example, the Finnish biobanks’ FinnGen cohort is presented in the Cohorts application.

Other genome data

In addition, whole exome sequencing (WES) or whole genome sequencing (WGS) data returned from biobank studies is available at some biobanks.

Combination of biobank data with data from other registries

Data from Finnish national registries or hospital data lakes can be linked to biobank sample donors by a separate application via Findata (Finnish Data Permit Authority). The commonly used Finnish national registries include:

• Care Register for Health Care (HILMO) maintained by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL)

• Register of Primary Health Care Visits (AVOHILMO) maintained by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare

• Cause-of-Death Register maintained by Statistics Finland

• Drug Reimbursement Register maintained by the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela)

• Secondary Use of Kanta Data. The health and social data in the Kanta Services is available for secondary use with the Kanta data platform

New research data always returns to biobanks

Finnish biobanking is designed to support the continuous accumulation of information. After each biobank study, sample-specific raw data and analyzed results are returned to the biobank, which further enriches the information connected to the samples and serves subsequent research projects. Returned data gives tremendous value back to the biobanks, hospitals, and universities and will help the promotion and development of new treatment methods for various diseases. Currently, the returned data consists mostly of genome data from projects such as the FinnGen biobank study.