Center for Biomedical Resources

Introduction

Center for Biomedical Resources at NHRI aims at supporting biomedical research through providing high quality research resources services in selected areas. Our goals include

A streamline from technical support, administrative workflow to service help desk has been built to provide timely and comprehensive services. Advisory committees are formed to supervise the strategy of services developments as well as to review the performances of the services. Major services provided include National Health Insurance Research Database, Bioinformatics Core Facility and NHRI Cell Bank, which are described as follows:

National Health Research Database

http://www.nhri.org.tw/nhird/
Taiwan launched a single-payer National Health Insurance (NHI) program on 1st, March 1995. As of February 2007, 22.43 million individuals of Taiwanese population were enrolled in this program. The NHI's database system contains registration files, original claim data and reimbursement data. Large computerized databases derived from this system by the Bureau of National Health Insurance(BNHI) are reconstructed into the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) by fully trained scientists in the National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) and has been provided to researchers in Taiwan for research purposes since year 2000.

Bioinformatics Core Facility

http://bioinfo.nhri.org.tw
Since 1998, NHRI has devoted great efforts in providing on-line sequence analysis tools, databases and mirror sites, as well as bioinformatics training courses, workshops and symposia to support bioinformatics research in Taiwan. These efforts led to the establishment of Bioinformatics Core Facility of Genomic Medicine and Biotechnology Development (The GMBD Bioinformatics Core, http://www.tbi.org.tw), sponsored by National Research Program for Genomic Medicine, through collective efforts from NHRI, National Hsing Hua University, National Chiao Tung University and National Cheng Kung University to provide integrated bioinformatics services to researchers in Taiwan.

NHRI Cell Bank

http://www.nhri.org.tw/cellbank/
NHRI Cell Bank has been established to provide authenticated high quality cell lines to researchers in Taiwan. It is located and managed in the Bioresource Collection and Research Center of Food Industry Research and Development Institute, Taiwan. With the joint efforts of the two institutions, NHRI Cell Bank serves as collection center for locally established cell lines as well as the training center for cell culture quality control techniques in Taiwan. Standard operation procedures of the collection, storage and distribution of cell cultures has been established and the management system has passed ISO9001-2000 certification since year 2001.

Activities

Annually held activities in the Center for Biomedical Resources includes workshops, symposiums and training courses of topics on national health insurance related research, bioinformatics and animal cell culture. The purpose of these activities is to disseminate developments in our services, promote interaction among researchers and to enable users getting familiar with the tools and services we provide.