The Secretariat of our association received a letter from the Kaohsiung City Government Health Bureau on March 11, Year 110 (2021) regarding “When each hospital’s Human Research Ethics Committee accepts a proxy review case, it should confirm with the research unit submitting the project whether they agree to the proxy review, so that the research unit can be informed of the status of the case being reviewed.”
Summary: A university teacher carried out a human research project without submitting it to the university’s internal Human Research Ethics Review Committee as required, but directly submitted it to the Human Experiment Committee of the research site (OO Hospital) for review. Subsequently, procedural flaws were found during the execution, and the hospital’s Human Experiment Committee decided to terminate the project and ordered the project leader and staff to be suspended for several months. Therefore, we request that your institution’s Human Research Ethics Review Committee, when formally accepting proxy reviews in the future, confirm with the university whether they agree to the proxy review, so that the university can be informed.
Current practice of our association: To comply with the Human Research Ethics Review Committee’s audit criterion item 3.7 “When reviewing a research project commissioned for review, there should be an appropriate follow‑up review mechanism,” we require a review protocol to be signed with the counterpart hospital or academic department before the review.
Current practice of our institution: If you wish to conduct a research project at our institution, you must send a letter to our Teaching and Research Center, and the project must undergo our IRB review and obtain approval from the institutional head before it can be carried out.
Re‑statement: To comply with the Human Research Ethics Review Committee’s audit criterion item 3.7 “When reviewing a research project commissioned for review, there should be an appropriate follow‑up review mechanism,” therefore a review protocol must be signed with the counterpart hospital or academic department before the review.
