The Ethics Review Equivalency (ERE) Task Team of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) Regulatory and Ethics Working Group met in Montreal, Canada in early May for a two-day workshop. The group, recently published a paper in the ethics review equivalency area, considering the background and to map the current approaches to a solution: reciprocity, delegation and federation. CLG Director, Professor Dianne Nicol is a member of the task team.
The purpose of this meeting was to outline the process for moving forward by assess the evidence already collated and turn the members of the task group’s minds to solving some of the key issues. In light of this, the group took the first steps and begun creating an Ethics Review Mutual Recognition Framework that would assist in large-scale international data-intensive research.
An area of interest to the group was the concern that accepting another institution’s ethics review decision opened up the potential that the receiving institution be held liable for a decision that they did not make. This is one of many of the concerns raised and flagged for further consideration.
Longer term, the group hopes to create a framework to promote efficient practices for ethics review enabling easier collaboration in the case of cross-jurisdictional projects and data sharing.