iSpecimen® Marketplace 2.0 delivers new capabilities to fuel broader biospecimen sharing

LEXINGTON, Mass., Oct. 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- iSpecimen today significantly upgraded its online exchange for biospecimens, making it easier for healthcare organizations to offer their valuable biospecimen collections to researchers around the world, and for researchers to obtain the specimens they desperately need.

iSpecimen Marketplace 2.0 went online today, and the newly enhanced platform remains free for researchers and suppliers to join.

The iSpecimen Marketplace is an online exchange designed to close the specimen gap that prevents researchers from readily obtaining the biofluids, tissues and cells they need to develop new therapeutics and diagnostics. Doing for research what Amazon has done for reading, the marketplace also addresses biobanks' financial sustainability challenges and the expectations of philanthropic patients.

"Health care organizations are increasingly called upon to share the millions of specimens they handle with researchers who desperately need them for their vital work," said iSpecimen Founder and CEO Christopher Ianelli, MD, PhD. "Historically, though, sharing has been complex and difficult, even within an institution's own walls. iSpecimen Marketplace 2.0 significantly advances our mission of making it simple for both sides to connect, discover and share."

End-to-end order management for suppliers

Hospitals, labs, biobanks, and other healthcare organizations, many fighting for financial sustainability, are leaving revenue on the table and falling short of their missions by letting specimens lie idle or be thrown away. Improvements that foster specimen sharing include:

Automated Order Management. End-to-end order management tools enable suppliers to easily accept/reject specimen orders, create catalogues, set prices, release specimens, manage shipping, track orders, invoice buyers and accept payments.

Easy onboarding. Suppliers can more easily share detailed data about their inventories and individual specimens with researchers thanks to powerful new data integration capabilities in the marketplace. Integration is easy whether suppliers currently manage inventories and data using spreadsheets, desktop databases, enterprise databases, or dedicated laboratory information management systems/laboratory information systems.

Improved Workflow. The marketplace now automatically focuses suppliers on their most urgent tasks, such as new requests, pending orders, and approaching deadlines. New workflow features also enable healthcare organizations to manage information about which staff collects specimens and their respective capabilities, such as collecting tissue specimens during surgery.

More specificity for researchers

The precision medicine era demands precision research, which the marketplace addresses with a range of new capabilities for researchers, including:

More specificity in specimen requests. iSpecimen Marketplace 2.0 enables researchers to search by new parameters that include histology, and tumor/disease-specific biomarkers.. 

Guided search. Context-based functionality now prompts researchers to specify minimum specimen requirements to ensure a resulting order would be ready for suppliers to execute. In addition to the new tumor parameters, researchers can point and click to specify patient demographics, diagnoses medications, procedure history, outcomes or specific test result ranges as they search.

Order tracking. Researchers can now view their specimen order status in real time, with optional automated alerts, as orders move from collection into shipment and delivery.

"Specimen sharing, just like knowledge sharing, is essential for medicine to progress at the rate we should expect in this exciting era of genomics and big data," said Ianelli. "Patients expect the samples they provide are helping the cause of medical progress. That's why we are continuing to knock down the obstacles one by one."

Marketplace attaining critical mass

Since the iSpecimen Marketplace's launch one year ago, hundreds of biotech, pharmaceutical, and academic institutions have signed on at no cost as marketplace users, collectively conducting thousands of searches across millions of patients and samples available for research. Initially launched providing access to one million banked samples, the iSpecimen Marketplace now provides access to 25 million clinical remnants annually.

Compliance

The iSpecimen Marketplace manages compliance with federal regulations such as HIPAA and the Department of Health & Human Services' Common Rule as part of the matching process. Users can download and view compliance documentation on a per-specimen basis, including consent templates and Institutional Review Board (IRB) approvals.

About iSpecimen

Headquartered in Lexington, MA, iSpecimen is the marketplace for human biospecimens, providing researchers with the specimens they need from the patients they want. The privately held company has developed the iSpecimen Marketplace, an online platform connecting healthcare organizations that have access to patients and specimens with the scientists who need them. Proprietary, cloud-based technology enables researchers to intuitively search for specimens and patients across a federated partner network of hospitals, labs, biobanks, blood centers, and other healthcare organizations. Researchers easily and compliantly gain access to specimens to drive scientific discovery. Partner sites gain an opportunity to contribute to biomedical discovery as well as their bottom line. And ultimately, healthcare advances for all. For more information about iSpecimen, please visit www.ispecimen.com.

SOURCE iSpecimen

Related Links

https://www.ispecimen.com