The Outlook of institutional research ethics in Lithuanian University of Health Sciences

The increasing importance of institutional ethical review of student level research is widely recognized. Obviously, the governmental national or regional research ethics committees (REC) play the most significant role in research ethics review system, however it should be ecognized that some realms of research involving human subjects are not covered by REC. Accoding to the new edition of CIOMS guideline 23: "All proposals to conduct health-related research involving humans must be submitted to a research ethics committee to determine whether they qualify for ethical review and to assess their ethical acceptability, unless they qualify for an exemption from ethical review". The increasing scale of such proposals as well as the enormous load of review process has naturally led to the idea of sharing the functions and activities between REC and IRB or UREC. Aparat from the strict regulations of REC's activities to revise, evaluate and approve for not) the scientifically sound and socially valuable research projects (likewise, clinical trials or population genetic studies) initiated by qualified scientists or pharmaceutical companies or other certified institutions, the review of "lower" (student) level of research was traditionally left to a sort of "small brother" of REC, traditionally named as an Institutional Review Board (IRB). In particular, mostly all biomedical research projects at the undergraduate student level were conventionally delegated to a variety of all possible types of IRB, for instance, university (or medical school) based research ethics committees (UREC) developed in the European context. [...].