It has be a while since I posted anything, but rest assured I’ve been busy. As a little insight into the process of getting a research study open and recruiting I’ll share a little of what I’ve been up to.

Once you have a protocol written the depending on the Univiersity process (as my study is linked to a PhD) you may have to have your protocol peer reviewed. For SYMPACT I had two peer reviews of my protocol and both were really positive and only asked me to make minimal changes. This was good news but it still took about a month to process.

Next, at the University of Southampton, you need to submit your protocol to their Ethics review process through a online platform called ERGO. Their ethics committee and governance team then look over everything very carefully and then will ask you to make revisions. For SYMPACT the revisions they requested were minor and in the beginning of Oct I received their ethical approval.

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

But I couldn’t open SYMPACT yet. As I plan to invite people who are patients in NHS health trusts to participate I then have to apply for Health Research Authority (HRA) ethical approval. This is done online through the IRAS system. So this is where SYMPACT is at now. It is currently under review and once I receive approval…

No I still won’t fully open. Once I have full ethical approvals I can then open the study to recruitment so I’ll be putting up posters in public spaces and posting about it here and on social media. But I’ll have one more approval that I need to get before I can invite patients in the NHS to participate. The final stage will be receiving local approval from the research departments at each NHS health trust before we can start asking patients to take part.

The good news is we are almost there. Hopefully I’ll have another update with the final ethical approval soon. Thank you for your patience.