Qatar Biobank will start operating from an additional building in Medical City from next month. This will be in addition to the present facility that it has in the same location.
Dr Hadi Abderrahim, managing director of Qatar Biobank, said: “We have a sequence of openings. The new facility also will be in Medical City. At present we are operating from Building No.29 and we will also occupy Building No.17 which is adjacent to our present building.”
He added: “At present we are working in two shifts. We need more staff so that we can increase the number of people we engage daily. We have to recruit more staff so that we can speed up our activities. Our starting capacity is 50 people per day. We hope to engage 100 participants
in the coming days.”
The officials also stated that there will be more clinics with the addition of the new building. “Now we have only two clinics. We will add four more and will have six in total. We hope to get the Translationary Research Institute in 2018.”
Qatar Biobank will host a two-day networking conference in February that will examine the development of
Qatar’s healthcare industry.
Qatar’s inaugural ‘Biobanking in the Content of Personalised Healthcare’ conference will be held on February 8 and 9 at the Qatar National Convention Centre. Local and regional experts along with their international counterparts gather to discuss the future of medical research and personalised medicine in Qatar.
Qatar Biobank was also recently awarded two International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) certifications by the British Standards Institute Group Middle East (BSI). The two qualifications - ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 - address Quality Management Systems and Information Security Management, which are top priorities for Qatar Biobank.
