Current Status of the Joint Institutional Review Boards in Foreign Countries and Suggestion for Operating in Korea

공동연구윤리심의위원회의 외국 현황과 국내 운영 방안

As the number of multicenter clinical studies has been increased very rapidly in recent years, the necessity of joint institutional review board (IRB) gets realized for making review process more efficiently. Large private joint IRBs such as Western IRB have been established and providing wide range of IRB activities in the United States. In Taiwan, Joint IRB was founded as a non-profit institute, which has been performing the review activities for premarketing multicenter clinical trials. In the United Kingdom, multicenter clinical studies should be reviewed by Multi-centre Research Ethics Committee. It is institutionalized that any IRB recognizes and accepts the review result of other Institution's IRB in Australia. The profit IRB, non-profit IRB, ad hoc IRB, regional IRB, or mutual recognition can be considered as models of joint IRB in Korea.