Institutional review board / ethics committee (IRB / IEC)
In Regulatory & approvals
Also known as: research ethics committee, REC, ethics committee
An IRB or independent ethics committee is a group, independent of the sponsor and investigator, that reviews a trial to protect the rights, safety, and wellbeing of participants. It must approve the protocol, the consent materials, and any recruitment material before the trial starts, and it reviews the trial periodically afterwards. "IRB" is the usual term in the United States and "ethics committee" elsewhere; the function is the same.
Why it matters
No approval, no trial. Nothing study-specific may happen to any participant before the committee has approved the current documents.
Example
A site wants to add a recruitment poster to a bus stop. The poster must go to the ethics committee for approval before it can be displayed.
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