Taoyuan General Hospital, Ministry of Health and Welfare (TYGH, MOHW) is located near the central area of the Provincial Highway 1 in the Greater Taoyuan region and is close to the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. Its role is a national epidemic prevention and is responsible for border quarantine. In accordance with the Human Biobank Management Act, TYGH Biobank was approved by the Ministry of Health and Welfare on April 23, 2021, as the first public hospital with biobank subordinate to MOHW.
The purpose of establishing the TYGH Biobank is to legally collect, preserve and use various types of human biological specimens related to clinical medicine. Under the dual supervision of TYGH, MOHW’s institutional review board (IRB) and ethics and governance council (EGC), the applications for the use of specimens and the related data and information will be reviewed. While maintaining the privacy and rights of participants, TYGH Biobank provides a standardized source of biological specimens and well-established complete clinical data system for medical research.
TYGH Biobank aims to collect blood samples based on population groups or specific groups (e.g. epidemic prevention and chronic diseases), and then expand and fully launch the collection of surgical emergencies (e.g. cancer tumors) to enrich the legal collection and storage of clinical specimens for research.
Since 2021, TYGH Biobank has actively joined into the National Biobank Consortium of Taiwan (NBCT) to collect and preserve the specimens of COVID-19 and severe pneumonia. In 2023, TYGH Biobank continued to expand the categories of clinical collection and the type as well as quantity of biosamples on the extension application approved by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and cooperated with the National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) to participate in various projects, aiming to increase the number of participants, diversity and characteristics of specimens, quality stability, as well as increase the applications for medical research. Subsequently, the final goal is to establish the value-added services and expand the database application services.