As part of integrated efforts aimed at accelerating research to improve health, UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) and the university’s Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) are joining forces with others to improve the HRPP application process, specifically to reduce the time required for application review and approval.
“These efforts are focused on making it easier for faculty to get their research going, and ultimately to make improvements in health more quickly,” said Elizabeth Boyd, PhD, associate vice chancellor, Ethics and Compliance, and director of CTSI’s Regulatory Knowledge & Support program.
Working with UCSF faculty such as Amy Gelfand, MD, the team is piloting a project to streamline the approval process for rapid chart reviews submitted via UCSF Open Proposals as part of the 2012 CTSI Pilot Awards to Improve the Conduct of research. Project collaborators include John Heldens, director of the UCSF HRPP; Vanessa Jacoby, MD; and Vanja Douglas, MD.
These efforts are focused on making it easier for faculty to get their research going.Elizabeth Boyd, PhD, Associate Vice Chancellor, Ethics & Compliance
“HRPP staff have been excited to collaborate with faculty on improvement efforts. We will be able to use this experience as a model for improvements for other types of research,” said Heldens.
Additional improvement efforts currently underway include:
- Expanding on the use of a Memorandum of Understanding allowing the five University of California health sciences campuses to rely on another UC Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, eliminating the need for duplicative reviews and decreasing the wait time for researchers to begin their work. The five UC health sciences campuses increasingly rely on other UC IRB approvals.
- Contracting with outside IRBs, such as Western IRB among others, to improve review times for multi-campus, Phase 3 and 4, industry-initiated studies.
To learn more, contact John Heldens.
UCSF's CTSI is a member of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards network funded through the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (grant Number UL1 TR000004) at the National Institutes of Health. Under the banner of "Accelerating Research to Improve Health," CTSI provides a wide range of resources and services for researchers, and promotes online collaboration and networking tools such as UCSF Profiles.