"Patientcentricity": An Editorial

Abstract On 12 March 2009 Time dedicated an entire issue indicating the top ten world-changing ideas for the next future and among these a special attention was dedicated to biobanks. The article asks a very important and challenging question: are there benefits that can be reasonably expected from very costly biomaterial storage and — if yes — which kind of benefits are these? What is insisted upon is the identification of the following burning ethical issue: privacy and security of data.The need of deepening these social and ethical aspects related to the biobank enterprise lead to the organization of the conference on “patientcentricity”. The conference took place in Rome on 28-29 September 2011 and it was organized by the Center of Biomedicine of the European Academy of Bolzano thanks to the financial support of the Italian Ministry of University and Research.This special issue introduces that conference, and this editorial introduces our motivations for this work.The wish and hope of the guest editors is that such discussions will contribute to opening new research and policy agendas by addressing new challenges and helping out in thinking new solutions.