About our Biobank

BioPortal is a unique research platform at the Jewish General Hospital (JGH)/Lady Davis Institute in Montreal built in partnership with the CERC Chair in Genomic Medicine at McGill.

BioPortal is fully aligned with the JGH strategy in digital health and is designed to address industry needs in large

quantity of real-world, high-quality clinical data and to access specific sub-populations for their clinical trials.

• Our vision is to transform clinical care by applying the latest knowledge and technologies in genomics and IT to benefit all patients admitted and who are provided care at the JGH and, ultimately, to the entire administrative population the JGH belongs to (called CIUSSS Centre-Ouest).

• Our mission is to leverage a bank of biomedical information from thousands of patients to incorporate precision medicine and genomics into clinical decision-making and deliver more effective, precise care to patients.

Our strategic perspectives:

• BioPortal will build on the experience gained in designing, building and exploiting the largest single-site COVID-19 biobank in the country, within the framework of the Québec COVID-19 Biobank .

• BioPortal will now focus on improving care for diabetes and will then rapidly expand to other common and rare diseases.

• Our teams will initially collect the health information in electronic medical records and biological samples from 2,500 diabetic patients per year. With artificial intelligence, our researchers will analyze this information to better understand the individual’s genetic risk for disease and its complications, clarify their diagnoses and find better medicines for their clinical conditions.

• Later, these individuals will be re-contacted for clinical trials that will test the application of this research to patient care and have them benefit from the latest therapeutics. Using an open-science approach, qualified researchers and industry investigators will be able to access our data to help guide our teams to the best possible clinical options. This BioPortal resource will also provide a large pool of patients to draw from for investigator-led, industry-sponsored trials.

For Researchers

What differentiates BioPortal from other biobanks?

• The deep clinical datasets we have been able to produce in collaboration with Digital Health.
• The distinct and diverse populations that the JGH serves.
• Open access to data. Fourth, REB-approved consent which enables recall-by-genotype studies.

Deep Phenotypic Data

Over the past two years, the BioPortal team in collaboration with Digital Health, has built one of the richest hospital-based datasets for COVID19. Types of data include:

• ER visits
• admission
• ICU admission
• vitals on arrival
• administered medications in hospital
• pharmacy reconciliation
• previous medical history by ICD10 code
• consult history, procedures performed and all lab values
• microbiology
• CT/XR/MRI imaging
• blood type

For the diabetes project, phenotypes will include, on top of those listed above:

• retinal images using AI-assisted technologies
• FibroScan to document liver damage
• brain imaging to document small vessel diseases

Contact us

Contact information for questions:

Email: coordinator-richardslab [at] mcgill.ca

Phone: 514-340-8222 ext. 27090