Issues with diagnostic tissue: a practical approach from a Canadian perspective

Excised human tissue is vital to personalized medicine and is broadly classified by its original reason for removal into diagnostic tissue and research tissue. Diagnostic tissue is a hospital record with mandatory retention requirements. Departments of Pathology, as stewards of diagnostic tissue, must ensure that decisions regarding access to diagnostic tissue for secondary purposes are handled in a responsible manner. This paper describes a committee-based approach to stewardship of diagnostic tissue from the perspective of a large academic health care institution in Canada.