Research Ethics and Governance
QMU is committed to stringent principles of scientific, clinical, ethical, financial and personal integrity.
QMU Ethics Research Panel
QMU has well-established regulations, procedures and guidelines for research ethics. Our Research Ethics Panel is responsible for scrutiny of internal non-clinical applications for ethical approval for all research projects, including those of research students and staff. The Committee monitors ethical standards in research and advises on the related ethical principles, regulations and procedures.
NHS Ethics and Clinical Research Governance
QMU requires ethical review of all non-clinical research involving human subjects, whether undertaken by University staff, students or by external researchers using University facilities or participants. Where research is clinical and will involve any of the following categories then researchers must contact the NHS Research Ethics Committee under the Department of Health/NHS framework. No research study within the NHS involving individuals, their organs, tissue or data may begin until it has a favourable opinion from a NHS Research Ethics Committee.
The categories are:
- Patients and users of the NHS. This is intended to mean all potential research participants recruited by virtue of the patient or user’s past or present treatment by, or use of, the NHS (for example where a subject is recruited due to an NHS diagnosed condition). It includes NHS patients treated under contracts with private sector institutions;
- Individuals identified as potential research participants because of their status as relatives or carers of patients and users of the NHS, as defined above;
- Access to data, organs or other bodily material of past and present NHS patients;
- Foetal material and IVF involving NHS patients;
- The recently dead in NHS premises;
- The use of, or potential access to, NHS premises or facilities and
- Individuals under the care of social or community care professionals, local authorities or prisons.
The booking system for NHS research ethics application process is the single process for applications. Electronic authorisation is mandatory for all ethics forms generated in IRAS for submission to RECs (Research Ethics Committees) across the UK. Where the CTIMP (Clinical Trial of an Investigational Medicinal Product) Notice of Substantial Amendment form (EudraCT Annex 2 form) is generated outside IRAS, the requirement for electronic authorisation is waived.
