Deakin University Collaborations
Barwon Health has an ongoing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Deakin University, which acknowledges our close research relationship and need to collaborate on research projects. This may entail the sharing of resources, staff, facilities and infrastructure.
To ensure your BH DU collaborative project meets the requirements of the MOU, Victorian ethics and governance guidelines, and experiences a timely review; please include the following in your submission;
Ethics
- BH HREC must provide ethical review for clinical research involving Barwon Health staff, Barwon Health patients, and their data or specimens. Deakin Research Office will generally then accept BH HREC approval. Healthcare Institution HRECs are NOT able to accept University HREC approvals.
- Peer Review Form is required for all student projects and ethical high risk projects - click for proforma and process.
- A Barwon Health staff member is required to be listed as Principal Investigator
Governance
4. Barwon Health Head of Department/Director Signoff/ Declaration of Support is required for all submissions.
5. Deakin University and Barwon Health MOU requires each research project collaboration complete an Annexure A agreement, to document details including funding arrangements, sponsorship, intellectual property and resources contributed by each institution. Please upload to ERM partially executed (with DU signature) and RDU will secure Barwon Health Executive signature once approved.
Either Deakin University OR Barwon Health must be nominated as the responsible institution, who will act as sponsor for each research project. The sponsor role cannot be shared. It is usually the institution responsible for protocol development AND/OR distribution of funds that is nominated as the responsible institution.
For assistance with your Annexure A and facilitation of Deakin University Signature – please contact Deakin University Contracts Office .
For projects that include additional collaborators, a Collaborative Research Agreement (CRA) with each additional institution is required.
BH DU collaborative research projects are otherwise advised to follow the multi-site submission requirements depending on ethical risk level (QA/Neg Risk, Low Risk, Greater thsn Low Risk or Clinical Trial).
For any questions or advice regarding research agreements, please contact the RDU [email protected]
Deakin guidelines for Deakin researchers who wish to conduct joint DU/BH projects
Guidelines for review for joint Deakin University/Barwon Health research projects involving human participants
When seeking human ethics approval of joint Deakin/Barwon Health research projects involving human participants (including patients or healthcare staff as part of Clinical Trials as well as non-clinical research such as surveys, questionnaires etc), you are advised to seek ethics approval from Barwon Health’s Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC)/governance office.
Deakin’s HREC (DUHREC) or faculty (HEAG) low risk ethics approval won’t necessarily be recognised by Barwon Health HREC/Research Development Unit (RDU) given its National Mutual Acceptance (NMA) jurisdictional obligations as a healthcare institution.
In addition to ethics approval, governance authorisation to conduct a research project is also required to be in place at each healthcare site at which you intend to conduct your research, including Barwon Health. You can contact [email protected] for further information and assistance with accessing/submitting ethics and governance form/s.
Once you have received ethics approval from Barwon Health HREC/RDU, DUHREC can note this existing approval, thus avoiding duplication of ethics review here at Deakin.
You will however need to submit a Previously Approved form to [email protected] including attaching evidence of the approval (eg BH email/memo). These applications need to be submitted and signed off by a Deakin staff member as per Deakin’s Human Research Ethics procedure. Please visit the Deakin Application forms page for more information and/or to download a previously approved application form.
Last Modified: Tuesday, 12 September 2023