What is the Hartenbank?

By registering as a donor with the Hartenbank, you give permission for your heart to be included in the Heart Bank after your death. This requires an autopsy. During the autopsy, the heart is removed and stored at the Hartenbank so that it can be used by researchers for scientific research. Your consent is required in order for this autopsy to be performed after your death. As a donor of the Hartenbank, you do not need to make any additional hospital visits or undergo any examinations.

In order to conduct proper scientific research, it is important that the Hartenbank also has access to your medical data. That is why the Hartenbank requests permission to access and process your medical data after your death. This data and the heart tissue will then be provided to researchers in pseudonymised form. This means that a unique code will be assigned to the data and tissue, so that they cannot be directly traced back to a specific person.

You can request the registration forms on this website. Read more

Information about the procedure after death, medical data, and how you can withdraw your consent. Read more >>

Would you like to request heart tissue or read more about the Heart Bank and research? Click here.

There are various forms of organ donation. If, for example, you are also an organ donor for transplantation purposes, this will always take precedence over heart donation for scientific research via the Hartenbank. Read more here.

The Hartenbank and the Hersenbank work closely together. The Nederlandse Hersenbank collects brain tissue and investigates causes and treatments for neurological and psychiatric brain diseases. This also requires brain tissue from donors who do not have a brain disease, so that it can be compared with brain tissue from donors with a brain disease.

A donor can register with both the Hartenbank and the Hersenbank. The heart and brain donation autopsy will then take place simultaneously at the same location. Afterwards, the body will be returned to the next of kin for burial or cremation.

See the website of the Hersenbank for more information about brain donation for scientific research.

Please call the Hartenbank as soon as possible: 088 2333 699.

Rouw Service Nederland will collect the body and transport it to Amsterdam UMC (VUmc location).

A specialist doctor (pathologist) performs the post-mortem examination together with a number of assistants.

The body is returned to the family and the funeral can take place.

The tissue is stored in a freezer at Amsterdam UMC.

Tekst

You can request the registration forms on this website. Read more >>

Information about the procedure after death, medical data, and how you can withdraw your consent. Read more >>

There are various forms of organ donation. If, for example, you are also an organ donor for transplantation purposes, this will always take precedence over heart donation for scientific research via the Heart Bank. Read more >>

The Hartenbank and the Hersenbank work closely together. Read more >>

By registering as a donor with the Hartenbank, you give permission for your heart to be included in the Heart Bank after your death. This requires an autopsy. During the autopsy, the heart is removed and stored at the Heart Bank so that it can be used by researchers for scientific research. Your consent is required in order to perform this autopsy after your death. As a donor of the Hartenbank you do not need to make any additional hospital visits or undergo any examinations.

In order to conduct proper scientific research, it is important that the Hartenbank also has access to your medical data. That is why the Hartenbank requests permission to access and process your medical data after your death. This data and the heart tissue will then be provided to researchers in pseudonymised form. This means that a unique code will be assigned to the data and tissue, so that they cannot be directly traced back to a specific person.