NDSU is among several regional institutions participating in the Great Plains IRB Working Group that represents a three-state region. Teryl Grosz, manager of the human research protection program at NDSU, serves as the university’s representative. The group’s goals include identifying areas of research collaboration and developing processes to efficiently review multi-institutional human research protocols.

“When researchers from several universities collaborate on a human research project, it can be a very time-consuming process when multiple Institutional Review Boards have jurisdiction of a project and each performs a separate review,” Grosz said.

Federal regulations allow cooperative review arrangements, according to Grosz, and NDSU currently maintains approximately a dozen cooperative review arrangements to encourage collaborative research programs and efficiently conduct protocol review. The new group is expected to expand opportunities for collaboration and efficiency.

The Great Plains IRB Working Group is an initiative of the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Great Plains Center for Clinical and Translational Research. Institutions included in the Working Group’s initial meeting were NDSU, University of North Dakota, South Dakota State University, University of South Dakota, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Nebraska-Omaha, Creighton University, Sanford Health and several other medical facilities in the three-state region.

NDSU’s IRB has received nearly 10 percent more submissions for review in fiscal year 2010, compared to fiscal year 2009, indicating a high level of research activity on campus.