Session Speaker

Research Ethics Committee in the UAE
Ghada AlTajir
UAE


Research in general, and clinical research in particular, has been relatively limited in the UAE as compared with other parts of the world. However, in the past decade, pharmaceutical companies and physicians have become interested in including hospitals in the UAE in multicentre clinical trials. With this has come the need to have regulatory mechanisms without which clinical research cannot take place. At the forefront comes the role of the Research Ethics Committee or the Independent Review Board. The Research Ethics Committee at Al Qassimi Hospital was established in 2001, and currently reviews research proposals for all institutions under the Ministry of Health. This Committee follows the WHO guidelines for ethics committees. Although there have been challenges such as introducing the concept of ethical approval, patient consent and the additional unpaid workload for committee members, overall the work of the Committee has played a significant role in the introduction and development of research at different levels in the UAE.