International Symposium “NOT EASY TO USE BIOBANK & BIGDATA? ~ WHAT IS THE BARRIER?” was held at the Hillside Plaza in Tokyo on February 12. More than 100 people, mainly from the industries participated in our event.

The symposium kicked-off with an opening speech of Mr. Taro Hokugo (Director for Atomic Energy, International Affairs and Biotechnology of the Cabinet Office), followed by an introductory talk of Dr. Masayuki Yamamoto (Executive Director of the Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization) and Dr. Mari Maeda-Yamamoto (Director of the Division of Food Function Research, Food Research Institute, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization). From Denmark, Ms. Lisbeth Nielsen (Director General of the Health data Agency, Danish Ministry of Health), Dr. Bartlomiej Wilkowski (Head of IT of the Danish National Biobank) and Mr. Jes Herbert (Head of Legal & Contracts, Technical University of Denmark) shared their experience and future prospects, and Ms. Akiko Yamauchi (Dentsu), Dr. Ken Kasahara (Chitose Laboratories) and Mr. Takeshi Haeno (Monitor Deloitte) gave opinions from the industry side. Dr. Atsushi Hozawa and Dr. Soichi Ogishima from ToMMo presented their research outcome and activities from Japan.

Discussion covered various subjects; outcome of the survey revealing consumers’ expectations towards personalized medicine/healthcare, current barriers for the industries to use biological samples and health big data for product development, how multiple biobanks and cohort studies are linked together and their data could be searched in both countries, platform and difficulties to promote industry-academia collaboration within the usage of cohort data etc.

Idea sharing and honest opinions during the event allowed stakeholders understand mutual needs to improve the platform accelerating innovative healthcare including personalized medicine, faster and efficient product development for disease prevention and many more.

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Dr. Bartlomiej Wilkowski from Danish National Biobank visited ToMMo