The Human Research Ethics Committee has two levels of review based on the risk associated with the research. When an application is received by the Office of Research and Higher Degrees, the ethics team will conduct a risk assessment to ascertain whether the application is of low or high risk. Depending on the level of risk the application is processed as follows:
Low risk applications will be forwarded every week for review to either the Human Research Ethics Committee Fast Track Committee or the Faculty Chair. Please note: an application may be considered to be of high risk and therefore will have to wait to be reviewed by the full Human Research Ethics Committee at the next meeting.
The estimated time for the decisions to be communicated to the applicant is within two weeks from the time the researcher forwards the application to the Ethics Officer. Please note: the committee in most circumstances request further information on a project, so the researcher will need to factor in the extra time for response, review and approval.
Where an application is deemed to be of high risk, it is forwarded to the full Human Research Ethics Committee to review at the next scheduled meeting.
The estimated time for the decisions to be communicated to the applicant is within three days from the meeting. Please note: the committee, in most circumstances, requests more information on a project so the researcher will need to factor in the extra time for response, review and approval.
Please note the below meeting dates for Human Research Ethics Committee meetings are subject to change.
Tuesday 15 October 2013
