Barwon Health (BH) has a Collaborative Framework Agreement with Deakin University (DU) 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 experiences a timely review and meets the requirements of the Collaborative Framework Agreement in addition to Victorian ethics and governance guidelines, the following is required:

Ethics

  1. BH HREC Approval is required for research involving BH staff/patients and/or their data or specimens. Barwon Health is not able to accept any university HREC approvals, whereas Deakin Research Office will accept BH HREC approval under their prior approval scheme (more details provided below).
  2. Peer Review Form is required for all student projects and ethical high risk projects – click for proforma and process.
  3. A Barwon Health staff member is required to be listed as Principal Investigator

In addition to ethics approval, governance authorisation is also required at each site you intend to conduct your research, including Barwon Health.

Governance

4. Barwon Health Head of Department/Director Signoff/ Declaration of Support is required for all submissions.

5. An Annexure A agreement is required for all research project collaborations under the BH-DU Collaborative Framework Agreement in order to document details including funding arrangements, sponsorship, intellectual property and resources contributed by each institution. Please upload the partially executed agreement to ERM (with DU signature) and RDU will secure BH Executive signature once approved.

6. A Visiting Researcher Application form is required for all DU staff requesting access to identifiable BH patient data and/or requesting to come on site at BH to conduct their research project.

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).

You can contact rdu@barwonhealth.org.au for further information and assistance with accessing/submitting ethics and governance forms

Frequently Asked Questions

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 or Research Integrity Unit.

For assistance with your Annexure A and facilitation of Barwon Health signature, please contact rdu@barwonhealth.org.au

No, the Annexure A is specific to the BH-DU collaborative framework.  For projects that include additional collaborators, a Research Collaboration Agreement (RCA) with each additional institution is required.

For any questions or advice regarding research agreements, please contact the RDU via rdu@barwonhealth.org.au.

Barwon Health is a participating organisation in the National Mutual Acceptance (NMA) scheme. The NMA is a national system for mutual acceptance of scientific and ethical review of multi-centre human research projects conducted in publicly funded health. This means that BH can only accept the ethical review of a NHMRC certified HREC. DU HREC is not an NMA recognised NHMRC certified reviewing HREC. Unfortunately this means that if a research project involves human participants to be recruited through BH (either patients or staff) then the project must be reviewed by Barwon Health HREC, or another NHMRC certified HREC.

Once you have received ethics approval from BH HREC, DU HREC can note this existing approval thus avoiding duplication of ethics review at Deakin.

You will however need to submit a Previously Approved form to research-ethics@deakin.edu.au including attaching evidence of the approval (e.g., 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.

Page last updated: July 5, 2024