29 Oct Japanese Researchers Visit SCRI and ITHS to Discuss Research Ethics Repository
Two Japanese researchers visited Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the Institute of Translational Health Sciences on Monday, October 26 to learn about the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Research Ethics Repository.
Visiting were Dr. Kuniko Aizawa, a researcher at the Office for Research Ethics and Bioethics at the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, and Dr. Yusuke Inoue, an assistant professor at the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Tokyo. Aizawa and Inoue, both bioethics consultants, plan to use the insights gained from the visit to help build an inter-institutional research ethics consultation service repository in Japan.
The CTSA Research Ethics Repository was developed by the Clinical Research Ethics Consultation Collaborative and offers a forum for 10 CTSA institutions to share and access bioethics consultations. The repository was created to develop best practices and share data about bioethics consultation activity to further education, quality improvement, and research across CTSA institutions.
During their visit, Aizawa and Inoue met with Dr. Benjamin Wilfond, Director of the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Seattle Children’s Hospital and Professor and Chief of the Division of Bioethics in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, to discuss the different approaches used for foster collaboration across CTSA institutions over the last eight years, which has culminated in the Research Ethics Collaborative that has 50 members.
“Dr. Inoue and Dr. Aizawa are leading the effort to create the infrastructure to support research bioethics across Japan,” shared Wilfond, who also leads the ITHS bioethics consultation service. “We discussed some of our failures at cross-institutional collaborations, such as our web-forum. We also talked about a recent success, our quarterly case webinar that typically has 30 members participating.”
Aizawa and Inoue also met with Ellen Kuwana and Katie Porter, bioethics research staff, to learn about the inner workings of the repository. Kuwana and Porter explained the structure and organization of the repository and how consultants use it to share and access consultation reports.
In addition, the researchers met with Justin Prosser and Ron Shaker, ITHS biomedical informatics infrastructure staff. Prosser and Shaker discussed the technical side of the repository, including what content management systems work best and different options for servers.
“Aizawa and Inoue learned that our current successes were the culmination of critical refinements and redirections to overcome challenges. By sharing those experiences, they can emulate our successes and build on them, such as the recent development of our Collaborative website,” concluded Wilfond.
