**5. Conclusions**

This Chapter has summarized the development of some key ethical concepts which specifically impinge upon the newly emerging discipline of human tissue biobanking in terms of classical notions as well as historical turning points which have resulted in current UK legislation. In particular, this paper highlights the fundamental dilemma between the rights of the individual and their duty to the society and describes in practical terms how the KCL Infectious Diseases Biobank is regulated and managed. Whilst, the essential ethical keystone to any biobank is the principle of informed consent, the effective functioning of a biobank necessitate that there should be as few restrictions as possible. A major challenge not mentioned above is that of the education of the general public about biobanks as one study reported strong evidence that more people are likely to embrace the idea of biobank research if they are informed (Gaskell & Gottweis, 2011). Interestingly, they proposed the use of social networking sites to promote the concept.

Now that the IDB has been established for several years most of the governance and ethics issues have been established, nevertheless new challenges are arising. Most pressing for the immediate future is improving the IDB's IT and data processing capabilities. This arises from the facts that the IDB's MTA which requires researchers to feedback raw experimental data and with some of the initial studies drawing to a close the quantity of information is becoming overwhelming. Ultimately though this will eventually permit the IDB to amass a detailed database on the patient volunteers and subsequently permit the multivariate analyses on these cohorts to identify important pathogenic markers.
