The University of California campuses at Berkeley and Riverside propose a unique collaboration to leverage human subjects compliance efforts underway at both locations. The Berkeley campus has been developing a comprehensive web-based compliance system called the Research e-Protocol System (RePS). Last year Berkeley received HSREP funding (grant no. S07 RR18201-01 ) to take the basic design of its electronic animal protocol module, which was already in the early stages of development, and create a human subjects RePS module. The Riverside campus currently has an electronic animal subjects system in use and is about to unveil a biohazards system and human subjects system but was not a HSREP recipient. We propose to: Share educational resources. The Riverside campus has adapted and implemented a compliance training/tutorial system for human and animal subjects, which was originally developed at UC Irvine. Berkeley wishes to adopt the UC Irvine/Riverside system and Riverside will share its adaptation project plan, schedule, methods, and results with Berkeley. Share computer technologies. The two institutions are very similar in many regards. Both conduct significant amounts of social & behavioral human subjects research; neither have a medical schools as part of the campus; both use a """"""""master protocol"""""""" model for animal subjects protocols; both are working on projects to integrate contract & grant, compliance, and financial systems; both use MIT's Coeus contract & grant system to track research proposals and awards; both need to satisfy the University of California's Office of the President on reporting requirements. Because of these similarities, many technologies deployed at one campus will have direct applicability to the other. Share best practices. Streamlining of business processes, strengthening of protections for human and animal subjects in research, reduction of administrative burdens on researchers and staff, reporting of adverse events, system and network security, training and educational outreach, web-based protocol submission, tracking, flow and committee review are among the areas where the collaboration will benefit both institutions enormously. We strongly believe that the proposed collaboration will strengthen the capabilities of both institutions in the long term. This project will improve business processes and practices, reduce administrative burdens, dramatically improve access to management information about research compliance, and ultimately enhance the ability of each institution to protect its human and animal research subjects.
