The Discovery & Innovation Unit is responsible for helping research teams navigate their research ethics, governance and administrative responsibilities when submitting a research application for approval.

We have introduced an intuitive online platform called Research Architect to manage the submission and approvals process and to centralise all associated correspondence between researchers and our team.

All new project approval requests must now be entered into Ethics Review Manager (ERM) before being registered in Research Architect (RA).

Research Architect allows teams to:

• view and track the progress of ethics requests, site-specific applications, post-approval requests, and research agreements
• monitor the full life cycle of requests – from draft through to approval
• update forms and documents within the portal, allowing collaboration on draft requests with other team members
• ensure ongoing research transparency and communication compliance to the National Clinical Trials Governance Framework
• have control over document naming conventions
• have full visibility of partnering department documents and approvals
• give automatic access for team members added as research team members, and
• access an in-platform knowledge base with policies, procedures, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), templates, SNAP accreditation resources, important dates and contact information.

How to submit a new project at Austin Health

1. Create and submit your application in ERM, including the HREA, VSM and supporting documents
2. Record the ERM reference number
3. Register the project in RA using the streamlined form and include the ERM reference number
4. Identify the department/s required to support the project at Austin Health
5. Submit your application and receive a confirmation email from RA

The Discovery & Innovation Unit (DIU) will retrieve the application from ERM and manage approval workflows and communications through Research Architect.

Please contact DIU via email if you have any questions.

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Visit the Knowledge Base on Research Architect to download the Research Architect user guide.