Stuart S. Olmsted

The Army manages the Department of Defense Serum Repository (DoDSR) of over 43 million serum samples and the associated Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS) database, whose primary use is for military health surveillance. RAND Arroyo Center examined the current capabilities of these resources to identify gaps and suggest strategies to improve their ability to meet current and future military health needs.

Insights and information from a study of twelve human tissue repositories; Case studies of twelve existing human biospecimen repositories performed to evaluate their utility for genomics- and proteomics-based cancer research and to identify 3best practices2 in collection, processing, annotation, storage, privacy, ethical concerns, informed consent, business plans, operations, intellectual property rights, public relations, marketing, and education that would be useful in designing a national biospecimen network.