All organizations are subject to risk and uncertainty. Adverse events may disrupt normal organizational activity and may even cause complete failure of business operations. Biorepositories are also at risk and there have been instances where multiple samples or entire collections have been destroyed. Biobank guidelines accordingly recommend the establishment of contingency plans to reduce risk to an acceptable level. In this review article, we will use general theory on risk management and illustrate how such principles can be used to establish a practical crisis management plan for any biobank organization.
Keywords: biological specimen banks; disaster planning; quality improvement.