Innovative System Introduced for Research Applications

A streamlined system being launched today is expected to bring some welcome relief to a large number of UK health researchers. IRAS (Integrated Research Application System) is an online system which is designed to make the process of applying for approval to conduct research in the health sector easier and less bureaucratic.

A long-held criticism from researchers has been that applying for approvals to conduct a piece of research in the UK health service involves grappling with a bewildering array of forms, many of which require the same details. It has been up to the researcher to duplicate this information on each separate review body’s application form, which has been a time-consuming and frustrating process.
IRAS combines seven review bodies’ applications, so researchers only need to enter their study information once. Once the information is entered into IRAS, it will populate the applications relevant to the type of research being undertaken.

IRAS builds on a system originally set up in 2004 to manage research ethics approvals which currently has 65,000 registered users. Lessons learnt from the implementation of this system have been applied to developing IRAS. While some successful integration of the governance and ethical applications systems has occurred, IRAS is a major step forward in integrating and simplifying processes for researchers.

Led by the National Research Ethics Service (NRES), a division of the National Patient Safety Agency, this project has been run under the umbrella of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC). This UK-wide initiative is also supported by the NHS R&D Forum, the major regulatory and governance bodies, the UK Health Departments, the UK Clinical Research Network, the Forum of NHS Wales for R&D Management in Health & Social Care and funders of research. This collaboration is a crucial part of the Government’s strategy to have an integrated programme of improvement in health research.

Dr Liam O’Toole, CEO of the UKCRC, said;

“IRAS is an excellent example of how the UKCRC and partnership working can make a tangible impact by bringing together a range of organisations in order to solve a common problem. It is a simple idea that a researcher should only have to provide the details of their study once. In reality the task was very complex and has required a lot of people working together to come up with this elegant solution.”

Sir John Lilleyman, Chair of the UKCRC Working Group set up to look at streamlining research applications, said;

“Researchers have rightly been critical of the regulatory steeplechase required when applying for approvals for health research. There was ready agreement within the health sector that the duplication of effort in providing information for different bodies was time-consuming and potentially avoidable. IRAS is a major step forward in our drive to improve these processes.”

Dr Janet Wisely, Director of NRES, says consulting widely with researcher users will be vital in the next few months before IRAS becomes compulsory. “It is important to us that researchers have the opportunity to use this system widely and give us feedback on all aspects, especially whether it is helpful to them and how it could potentially be more useful.

“Researchers will find the IT platform familiar but IRAS is now more than that. It is the combination of data sets and application forms that can be shared and used for a number of different governance approvals. It is envisaged that even more improvements will be made both to content and the operating platform. The planned functionality to exchange information with Eudract will be a major benefit for those needing approval from MHRA. There is also potential to extend the system further to include additional partners such as funding bodies.”

IRAS will continue to be improved as feedback is received. The traditional systems will still be available for those researchers who want to use them but they will be phased out later in the year.