Ethics processes

The Women’s Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) closed in December 2024.

All existing Women’s single site HREC approved projects have been transferred to the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) HREC.

The governance of these projects (SSA) will remain with the Women’s Research Office.

Submission of new ethics applications

There are 7 NHMRC certified National Mutual Acceptance (NMA) Scheme HRECs in Victoria. These HRECs are based at Melbourne Health, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, The Royal Children’s Hospital, Alfred Health, St Vincent’s Hospital, Austin Health and Monash Health.

All of these committees charge fees related to HREC submissions and amendments for commercially sponsored and non-commercially sponsored / investigator-initiated projects. For more information, please visit the individual HREC websites. Fees are incurred at the cost of the researcher.

The Women’s will accept NMA HREC approved projects that have the Women’s listed as a site.

More details of the NMA Scheme are available at Clinical Trials and Research in Victoria.

Which NMA HREC committee should I submit to?

Researchers can submit their ethics application to any of the NHMRC approved NMA HREC committees.

Note: The Women’s needs to be listed as a site in the approved application.

The Women’s Research Office recommends:

• submission to the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) HREC. We are working closely with the RMH Office for Research, with many processes being aligned between the offices.
• specialised projects should submit to specialised HRECs e.g. newborn research to the Royal Children’s Hospital HREC, cancer research to Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre HREC.