NOTE: Do you experience access problems? Please report them to ethicscommittee-bms@utwente.nl
Welcome at the website of the BMS Ethics Committee (EC). This committee facilitates and monitors the ethical conduct of all research involving human beings in the Faculty of BMS.
To ensure an ethically responsible research practice, it is mandatory for employees and students from the Faculty of BMS to submit their research project for ethical assessment in case your research involves human participants or/and using potentially sensitive data about and/or from individuals, groups or organizations.
This webpage offers all information you need about the assessment procedure and the ethical principles and criteria used.
PROCEDURE
If you plan to do research with human subjects you have to submit your proposal for ethical assessment. This is in principle for all intended research within the faculty of BMS involving humans in an indirect (i.e. file or social media research) or direct manner (i.e. experiments, surveys, interviews). You can only start the research after you gained ethical approval. The BMS Ethics Committee will assess whether the research proposed conforms to ethical standards. This applies to all research that is conducted by BMS staff, PhD’s, postdocs and students (BA-/MA-thesis), regardless of where it is conducted. This means that even if the organization where you plan to do your research does not require any ethical approval, you still have to submit your research for approval of the BMS EC. If research is conducted by students or trainees, the supervising staff member bears the ultimate responsibility (because there needs to be an employment relationship with the University). Read more below under 'BMS Research or not', also important for Bachelor and Master students.
Ethically assessed elsewhere?
If your research has undergone ethical assessment outside the Netherlands, we ask you to submit it for assessment by us as well, as ethical guidelines for conducting research may differ between countries. If your research has been assessed and approved by an ethics committee in the Netherlands, but outside the Faculty of BMS, the BMS Ethics Committee will adopt the previous decision. You should nevertheless always provide the Secretary of the BMS Ethics Committee with documentation on the external submission and the decision. Also identify whether the organization with which you will be working has its own requirements and policy for the ethical review of research. If it does, submit your proposal to this organization, and provide us with a copy of your application and the resulting decision.
In case of a research subject to WMO/non-WMO read further under 'medical-ethical review'.