African Data & Biospecimen Exchange

The African Data and Biospecimen Exchange, ADBEx, is a platform for sharing data and biospecimens from Africa in ways that are more equitable and ethical. It supports fair research partnerships while improving the availability of those collections. ADBEx raises their visibility without ceding oversight by African researchers, builds capacity within Africa, and helps those researchers participate equitably in the science their data and biospecimens make possible.

We worked with ADBEx from the research through to the design, visiting countries across Africa to learn about user needs, scalability, language, and real-world scenarios. We built prototypes, tested them with users across the continent, and used what we learned to design the platform. Tim and his team at Methodlab took care of the front-end and back-end development.