Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-National Centre for Disease Informatics and Research (NCDIR), WHO Country Office for India, and Indian Society of Clinical Research (ISCR) jointly organized a Webinar on ethics review of biomedical projects during a pandemic, to bring the focus on the need of quality research outcomes and adopting new research methodologies to respond to humanitarian emergencies.
The webinar brought together 400 key stakeholders including ethics committee members, clinical research and healthcare professionals, patients, patient representative groups and students etc.
Responding to the ethical changes with the emerging times due to COVID-19, ICMR developed National Guidelines for Ethical committees reviewing biomedical and health research during COVID-19 pandemic to inform about the ethical conduct and review of research for ensuring participant safety and right at all time.
The expert panelists provided an overview on the ICMR guidelines with an objective to guide quality research outcomes in a time-bound manner. The role of ethics committees in supporting the ethical conduct of research in India was highlighted during the deliberations. The experts unanimously echoed the urgent need to respond to humanitarian emergencies by designing innovative methods, appropriate use of digital platforms and new technology, effective management of limitations of time, infrastructure, resources and enable quick communication.
Dr Madhur Gupta, Technical Officer, Pharmaceuticals, WHO Country Office for India, provided insights on the WHO initiatives to guide ethics committees during public health emergencies. She reiterated that conducting research on new medications or vaccines during a pandemic is essential, and research ethics committees need to be prepared to review research projects in a time-bound manner.
The other key panelists included: Dr Roli Mathur, Scientist-F and Head, ICMR Bioethics Unit; Dr Bikash Medhi, Professor, Department of Pharmacology, PGIMER, Chandigarh, India; Dr Srikanth Krishnamurthy, Principal Investigator and Consultant Pulmonologist, Institute of Lung Cancer and Research Hindustan Hospital, Coimbatore; Dr Partha Goekhle, Chair, Ethics Council, Indian Society of Clinical Research; Dr Subrojyoti Bhowmick, Clinical Director, Research and Academics, Peerless Hospital Ethics Committee; and Dr Usharani Pingali, Ethics Committee Member, Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad.
WHO Guidance for Research ethics committees in public health emergencies:
- Guidance for research ethics committees for rapid review of research during public health emergencies
- Ethical considerations to guide the use of digital proximity tracking technologies for COVID-19 contact tracing
- Key criteria for the ethical acceptability of COVID-19 human challenge studies
- Q and A: Ethics and COVID-19: resource allocation and priority setting
- Ethical standards for research during public health emergencies: Distilling existing guidance to support COVID-19 R and ;D
- Online training course: Ethics in epidemics, emergencies and disasters: Research, surveillance and patient care