HSNRI Eliminates Manual Processes and Saves Time with Human Ethics

Challenge

The Health Sciences North Research Institute (HSNRI) serves as the research wing of Northern Ontario’s largest hospital, Health Sciences North (HSN). HSNRI works with students, clinicians, researchers, and regional partners to support collaborative research efforts and improve health outcomes in Northern Ontario, with current focuses on cancer solutions, cardiovascular health, healthy aging, and indigenous health, among other priorities. 

Over the past several years, The HSN Research Ethics Board experienced an increase in the number of individuals who wanted to conduct research at the institute, as well as more industry-led studies and clinical trials that came with a significant number of attached documents to manage.

The manual administration systems and processes in place at HSNRI—such as spreadsheets for active studies and approvals and manually sent expiry reminder emails—created undue administrative burden for teams and slowed workflows. With expectations for continued growth in mind, administrators sought a better way to manage higher workloads across the institution.

Solution

HSNRI staff began vetting digital management solutions to help facilitate Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocol submissions and reviews to reduce the turnaround time for each submission and free more time for administrators to process the increased number of projects conducted at the institution. 

Ultimately, the institution determined that Cayuse Human Ethics provided the best fit for its current needs and fully launched the implemented solution in March 2024. 

Since then, Research Facilitator Andrea Moreau notes that the Research Services Office has already received “around 50 initial submissions that our office has been able to process and approve,” already an increase from last year with more expected by the end of 2024. She adds that she suspects this notable increase reflects reduced administrative processes and faster workflows enabled by Cayuse Human Ethics.

Results

With Human Ethics now fully integrated into the institute’s research workflows, individuals and teams have already seen significant benefits on multiple fronts.

Administrators and researchers are particularly impressed with the solution’s ease of use and intuitive design. “For me personally,” Andrea reports, “I find I’m able to spend more time sitting down and doing the pre-reviews of submissions and sending them out to reviewers than I was before.”

In fact, Human Ethics was so well received that the institution listed its rollout and user adoption as one of the year’s big accomplishments at a research event attended by members of the general public, healthcare workers, and others interested in research.

A recreation of the Human Ethics section of HSNRI’s Research Facilitator Catalyst Role poster

Users like Andrea have particularly enjoyed the software’s centralized management platform that keeps everything in one place accessible with a secure login. This means individuals no longer need to spend significant time and effort updating and searching through manually updated spreadsheets and emails to find what they need to process submissions, reviews, and more.

The compare feature for modifications also “100% made things easier for reviewers” according to Andrea. Where before Cayuse they had no way to compare modifications besides looking at spreadsheets to dig through the data or requesting custom PDFs with highlighted comparisons (creating more work for administrators), reviewers can now easily check and compare modifications at a glance in Human Ethics with no additional administrative work required. 

Other Canadian research institutions have taken note of HSNRI’s Human Ethics implementation and Cayuse’s ability to support Canadian regulations. “We’ve spoken to several other Canadian Research Ethics Boards, many of whom have since chosen to go ahead with Cayuse at their own institutions,” Andrea says, noting that Human Ethics is largely compatible with Canadian regulations and requirements.