In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly across the globe, health research was vital to better understand a new disease and develop treatments. The HRA helped get ethically-approved research underway quickly whilst maintaining public confidence. These were extraordinary times, but we are learning from them to transform our ordinary operation.
World leading
Our fast-track approvals service for the most urgent COVID-19 research reduced the average research review timelines by 90%, from 62 to 5 days for HRA Approval. Over 700 COVID-19 research studies were approved in this way.
An extraordinary response
We approved 1357 COVID-19 studies between April 2020 and September 2021. Our Confidentiality Advisory Group provided rapid advice on applications to access patient information without consent.
Approving a world-first
In February 2021, we approved the world’s first COVID-19 human infection challenge study to take place here in the UK. We assembled a specialist Research Ethics Committee to review the research proposal to ensure that the interests of the people taking part were considered throughout. Their review helped improve the research and meant that those taking part could be confident that they will be well informed and looked after.
Making the extraordinary, ordinary – fast-track ethics review
In January 2021, we worked with partners in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, to pilot a fast-track ethics review within 15 days, 50% faster than standard timelines, for non-COVID phase 1 and global clinical trials. Fast-track ethics review is now open to global clinical trials and phase 1 trials as part of combined review.
Fast-track
Fast-track ethics approval has halved the time it takes to review and approve research proposals from 28 days to 14.
Reference: Median approval time for full REC in 2021 (January to October) is 28 days, for fast-track REC this is 14 days.