Navigating Interactions Between DMCs and IRBs

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are responsible for protecting research participants by reviewing the study at initial and periodic review and ensuring that risks are minimized and appropriately balanced with benefits, and that key features of research are adequately disclosed to participants. Data monitoring committees (DMCs) play a role in protecting participant safety, ensuring the integrity and credibility of a trial, identifying beneficial treatments early, and advising termination of a trial if a treatment is or is likely to be ineffective. Although IRBs and DMCs share the goal of protecting research participants, the extent to which IRB and DMC responsibilities overlap or diverge is not clear and is often difficult to navigate in practice. Further complicating the division of labor is the fact that IRBs and DMCs rarely communicate directly.

Deliverables