Norwegian Institute for Public Health Selects BiOS System for Biobank

Hamilton Storage Technologies has announced the sale of a -80°C BiOS™ third-generation automated storage system to the Norwegian Institute for Public Health (NIPH) in Oslo, Norway. The system will be used to store and manage more than two million biological samples that have been collected in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study and are currently stored in manually operated chest freezers. The BiOS system was chosen, after a rigorous tender process, based on Hamilton’s unique solution for sample integrity and superior service.

The new -80°C BiOS system provides large-scale, ultra-low-temperature storage and management of sensitive biological samples, such as the plasma and urine collected in the Norwegian cohort study. In contrast to other sample storage systems on the market, the BiOS system’s automated sample picking devices can ensure higher sample integrity by picking in -80°C environments. The system can also alternate between the three tube sizes used by NIPH without manual hardware changes – two important capabilities for NIPH. Hamilton expects to deliver the new system in the spring of 2013.

The BiOS system will help the NIPH give academic researchers throughout the world access to these study samples. “Sample retrieval from the chest freezers has become unmanageable, and some of the tubes have already collected frost,” explained Kari Harbak, director of the NIPH’s biobank department. “Automation is important in reaching our goal of sharing this group of samples with as many academic researchers as possible.”

"The BiOS system eliminates some of the many factors that degrade samples, by picking at ultra-low temperatures and keeping samples close to -80°C throughout their lifetime in the system," explains Dr. Martin Frey, head of storage technologies at Hamilton, based in Bonaduz, Switzerland.

"With detailed temperature logs and full audit trails, the BiOS system eliminates unknowns and gives our customers the utmost confidence in the quality of their samples," adds Dr. Frey. “The NIPH has already collected all of the samples for this study, and the NIPH BiOS system will be the first Hamilton unit actively delivering biological sample tubes to research partners of NIPH.”