Posted by : Admin|Date : 13 Nov, 2022|Location : Karamsad

Nineth National Annual Conference of Forum for Ethics Review Committees of India held at BU

The Ninth National Annual Conference of Forum for Ethics Review Committees of India was held at Bhaikaka University, Karamsad from 10-12 November 2022.

In this scientific conference, Dr.Utpala Kharod, Provost Bhaikaka University, Dr. Himanshu Pandya, Dean Pramukhswami Medical College, Dr. Barna Ganguly, Professor, Pharmacology Department, Dr. Swati Roy, Member Secretary IEC were the Patron, Organising Chairperson, Organising Secretary, and Joint Organising Secretary respectively.

It was designed to sensitize Institutional Ethics Committee [IEC] members, Research Scholars, and Investigators about key areas like roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders, improving the quality of research activities in view of emerging issues in biomedical and health research in India. 115 resource persons participated from all over India.

The resource persons were from different areas eg: clinicians, academicians, investigators, trainers, etc. The scientific sessions comprised discussion of various topics on the status of device trials, stem cell research, artificial intelligence, vulnerable population, and authorship issues. The participants had the opportunity to discuss their queries on each topic with respective speakers.

On day one Dr. Juntra Karbwang-Laothavorn M.D., Ph.D. from Mahidol University, Thailand provided the keynote address in the context of Global Quality Assurance and Improvement. She emphasized the importance of accreditation of ethics committees.

There was another important session on Global Clinical Trials involving Healthy Volunteers, taken by Dr. Francois Bompart from DNDi, Switzerland. A lot of issues and queries on healthy volunteers involved in clinical trials and their scenarios in different countries including India have been discussed.

In the end, there was a paper presentation session, and 12 papers were presented by Investigators from different regions of India. Out of the three papers were selected for awards as Best paper and runners-up.

On the second day, reputed speakers from pharmaceutical companies conducted scientific sessions on the decentralization of clinical trials and their issues. Following this, sessions on ethical issues in research related to AYUSH were conducted by speakers from the Bureau of India Standards, New Delhi, the Advisory Board of AYUSH, the Ministry of Health, AYUSH Pharmaceuticals, etc.

In the end, the valedictory speech was given by Dr. Saumitra Dutta, consultant Psychiatrist, on the management of emotional stress in research governance. Dr. Nandini Kumar, Retired Deputy Director General of ICMR also attended the conference.