In response to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy that proposed the use of a single institutional review board, or sIRB, for multisite research, NYU School of Medicine’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) Operations and Clinical and Translational Science Institute developed the sIRB Alliance at NYU School of Medicine.

 

Our Mission

Launched in 2018, our alliance aims to establish consensus on standardization of relevant policies, procedures, and information technology to support broad adoption of the NIH sIRB model.

Our members include more than 100 research institutions, some funded by the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program.

Through structured surveys, working group teleconferences, and consensus meetings, the sIRB Alliance at NYU School of Medicine has been working on standardized sIRB best practices intended to guide administrative processes for sIRB review of NIH-funded multisite clinical studies. Having a standard approach for review also facilitates efficient and effective communication between institutions participating in the sIRB model.

Implementation of these best practices and information technology solutions will reduce variations in sIRB review and enable institutions across the country to carry out the NIH’s vision for a streamlined sIRB model.

What We've Achieved

  • Reached a consensus on a unified sIRB model, the sIRB Alliance at NYU School of Medicine engaged CTSA and non-CTSA stakeholders through a structured survey, working groups, and consensus meetings.

  • Established a consensus for best practices for standardized administrative oversight of local context issues during initial and continuing review in the sIRB model—in both sIRB and participating site contexts

  • Tested whether an open-source platform based on the sIRB cloud exchange technology’s application programming interface (API) can implement best practices for participating sites in a network of non-CTSA research institutions

  • Tested whether a cloud-based messaging and data management system (sIRB cloud exchange) can implement best practices for the initial and continuing review of local context issues in the sIRB model