Research Ethics Compliance Management Software
"EthicsRM" is a cloud-based Research Ethics Compliance Review Management system helping researchers collaborate on, submit, track and manage ethics applications, ethics reviews and ethics approvals. Users include Research Administrators, Ethics Administrators, Research Office at research universities, hospitals, Institutional Review Boards and government bodies to manage workflows for Ethics Committees.
Features
- Create and configure interactive forms and workflows
- Applicants can collaborate with researchers and supervisors to develop applications
- Facilitate ethics committee reviewers to collaborate on submitted application reviews
- Automated application classification, routing and assignment
- Automated alerts for deadlines and milestones
- Standard communication templates
- Documentation repository
- Role based dashboards
- Reporting on portfolio status and KPIs
- Audit trail on all project, applicant and user activity
Benefits
- Significant cost savings from improved efficiency and accuracy
- Save time of Research Managers, Reviewers and Secretaries
- Eliminate paper and email correspondence regarding Ethics Compliance
- Reduced Ethics Review and Ethics Compliance process workflow complexities
- Improved data accuracy by reducing manual data entry and duplication
- Improved flow of information between key research stakeholders
- Reduce missed deadlines
- Have easy access to all documentation and updates
- Easily generate reports and track performance
- Update ethics management and review workflow and forms any time
Pricing
£25,000 to £40,000 a licence a year
- Education pricing available
- Free trial available
Service documents
Request an accessible format
Framework
G-Cloud 14
Service ID
1 1 2 0 4 1 0 3 5 7 3 7 2 7 9
Contact
Infonetica Ltd
Russell Pridmore
Telephone: 0208 334 6900
Email: Russell.Pridmore@infonetica.net
Service scope
- Software add-on or extension
- Yes, but can also be used as a standalone service
- What software services is the service an extension to
- Research Management Platform ("Research Flow")
- Cloud deployment model
- Private cloud
- Service constraints
- No
- System requirements
-
- Internet
- Web browser
User support
- Email or online ticketing support
- Email or online ticketing
- Support response times
- Tickets are classified into 4 groups depending on the nature of a ticket and the severity of the incident. The response rate is dependent on the severity. A table detailing response rates and escalation routes is included in the contract.
- User can manage status and priority of support tickets
- No
- Phone support
- Yes
- Phone support availability
- 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
- Web chat support
- No
- Onsite support
- Yes, at extra cost
- Support levels
- We provide training to system administrators to build forms and workflows as well as to manage and use the system. These training sessions are provided at the start of the service and subsequently additional days are available on a needs basis at a cost of £1,100 per day. The system is very intuitive such that historically users have not needed any training to use the system. In addition, we offer telephone, email and support via an Online Jira platform for any system related queries or issues. Clients would also have a single point of technical contact as further support.
- Support available to third parties
- Yes
Onboarding and offboarding
- Getting started
- We provide training to system administrators to build forms and workflows as well as to manage and use the system. These training sessions are provided at the start of the service and subsequently additional days are available on a needs basis. The system is very intuitive such that historically users have not needed any training to use the system. In addition, we offer telephone, email and support via an Online Jira platform for any system related queries or issues. Clients would also have a single point of technical contact as further support.
- Service documentation
- Yes
- Documentation formats
- End-of-contract data extraction
-
On termination or expiry of the Contract, or any Service being provided to the Customer under the Contract,
the Customer may request a release of the Customer Data in Native Format as stored within the Software, within 30 days of termination, using the Data Release Request form which will be supplied by Infonetica at the end of the contract. - End-of-contract process
-
Upon contract termination, Infonetica will collaborate closely with the University to ensure a smooth exit. Should the customer submit a Data Release Form (which will be provided by Infonetica at the end of the contract term), we will providing a copy of the system data in SQL.Bak format
Within 28 days of receipt of the Data Request Form, Infonetica can return to the customer all confidential Information of the customer. Customer data from the service will be provided in the native Format.
Once the University acknowledges the receipt of the returned data, Infonetica will expeditiously delete the system data from the live site. The data will be unrecoverable.
No additional charges are applied to the University unless there are additional requests.
Using the service
- Web browser interface
- Yes
- Supported browsers
-
- Microsoft Edge
- Firefox
- Chrome
- Application to install
- No
- Designed for use on mobile devices
- Yes
- Differences between the mobile and desktop service
- None
- Service interface
- No
- User support accessibility
- WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
- API
- Yes
- What users can and can't do using the API
- Using the API, users can export data to and import data from other systems. The API can consume as well as output in XML or JSON data.
- API documentation
- Yes
- API documentation formats
-
- Other
- API sandbox or test environment
- Yes
- Customisation available
- Yes
- Description of customisation
- System administrators can customise forms, workflows and branding. They can also customise screens and dashboards for various user types. Admnistrators and reviewers can customise their personal work area.
Scaling
- Independence of resources
- All customers run in their own resource pool. While the system is capable of utilising excess resources if required, we can also clamp the resources to ensure a single customer does not impact other users.
Analytics
- Service usage metrics
- Yes
- Metrics types
- Applications, users, reviewers and storage.
- Reporting types
- Reports on request
Resellers
- Supplier type
- Not a reseller
Staff security
- Staff security clearance
- Other security clearance
- Government security clearance
- Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)
Asset protection
- Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Data storage and processing locations
- United Kingdom
- User control over data storage and processing locations
- No
- Datacentre security standards
- Managed by a third party
- Penetration testing frequency
- At least once a year
- Penetration testing approach
- ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
- Protecting data at rest
-
- Physical access control, complying with another standard
- Encryption of all physical media
- Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
- Data sanitisation process
- Yes
- Data sanitisation type
- Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
- Equipment disposal approach
- A third-party destruction service
Data importing and exporting
- Data export approach
- Users are be able to download their applications which include data they submit. At the end of the contract, clients would receive an extract of their data in the native format.
- Data export formats
-
- CSV
- Other
- Other data export formats
-
- DOC
- JSON
- XML
- HTML
- Data import formats
-
- CSV
- Other
- Other data import formats
-
- XML
- JSON
Data-in-transit protection
- Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- Data protection within supplier network
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
Availability and resilience
- Guaranteed availability
-
Service Availability during standard working hours = 99.9%
Service credits can be claimed during the month after a month where availability falls within the following bands:
Availability during a given month: 99.8-98.1% = 0% service credit
Availability during a given month: 98.00% = 3% service credit
Availability during a given month: 97.00% = 5% service credit
Availability during a given month: 96.00% or less = 8% service credit - Approach to resilience
- All servers are virtualised and clustered. It is designed to be self healing so a working server will always take over from a failed server. We maintain a second facility that keeps a realtime copy of the Data and ensures the whole service is resilient from any hardware failure right through to entire data centre failure. Hourly backups with 90 day retention ensure partial data can be restored from a partial corruption or error.
- Outage reporting
- A customer dashboard displays overall SLA levels for the past 12 months.
Identity and authentication
- User authentication needed
- Yes
- User authentication
-
- Username or password
- Other
- Other user authentication
- Ethics RM supports standard forms authentication out-of-the-box.It also supports various forms of Single Sign-on including ADFS, Azure and Shibboleth. Ethics RM also supports authentication directly through LDAP. We also offer dual authentication for institutions who have chosen a single sign-on system. This will allow both internal and external reviewers to access the system.
- Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
-
We have tightly controlled privileged account access. Support require permission from clients to access their account through the management interface of the site.
Support have no direct access to backend systems and data. Direct management of internal systems controlling the data is tightly controlled by 2 senior employees. - Access restriction testing frequency
- At least every 6 months
- Management access authentication
-
- Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
- Dedicated link (for example VPN)
- Username or password
Audit information for users
- Access to user activity audit information
- Users have access to real-time audit information
- How long user audit data is stored for
- At least 12 months
- Access to supplier activity audit information
- Users contact the support team to get audit information
- How long supplier audit data is stored for
- At least 12 months
- How long system logs are stored for
- Between 6 months and 12 months
Standards and certifications
- ISO/IEC 27001 certification
- No
- ISO 28000:2007 certification
- No
- CSA STAR certification
- No
- PCI certification
- No
- Cyber essentials
- Yes
- Cyber essentials plus
- Yes
- Other security certifications
- No
Security governance
- Named board-level person responsible for service security
- Yes
- Security governance certified
- Yes
- Security governance standards
-
- ISO/IEC 27001
- Other
- Other security governance standards
- CyberEssentials Plus accreditation.
- Information security policies and processes
- We have a full ISMS set of policies and processes covering all aspects of our Security and operations. This can be provided on request.
Operational security
- Configuration and change management standard
- Supplier-defined controls
- Configuration and change management approach
- We maintain a fully secured source control and change management system. All changes are peer reviewed before committing. Deployment of change is only possible from a committed change. We work on lots of small changes rather than significant bulk updates. If we make a substantial change to the solution security, this would trigger a fresh penetration test.
- Vulnerability management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Vulnerability management approach
-
Aside from regular penetration testing, we operate enterprise grade Malware and intrusion detection. This analyses our logs and services looking for vulnerabilities that match criteria supplied from common threat notification services. These services include IBM, Cylance & Alienvault OTX reports.
Patch management systems are in place to ensure critical updates are immediately deployed with Bi-Weekly patch reviews of non critical updates. - Protective monitoring type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Protective monitoring approach
-
Both our Malware detection and Security Management systems detect threat activities from application behaviour or logged events. If a potential compromise is detected, both are capable of tracing back the source of the compromise which helps identify what that compromise had access up to it's prevention or termination.
Potential compromises are investigated as a top priority and we have a full Incident response process to ensure we respond internally and notify users of any breach within the the ICO guidelines. - Incident management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Incident management approach
- We have a full incident management process detailing incident grading and response times. This can be provided on request.
Secure development
- Approach to secure software development best practice
- Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)
Public sector networks
- Connection to public sector networks
- No
Social Value
- Social Value
-
Social Value
- Fighting climate change
- Equal opportunity
Fighting climate change
As a cloud-based service, our Research Ethics Compliance Management system offers reduced electricity consumption, higher utilisation rates across the cloud infrastructure and reduced reliance on infrastructure than any on-premise applicationEqual opportunity
We are an equal opportunities employer with a diverse team. We have active equal opportunities policies for topics such as anti-discrimination, our equitable recruitment and selection process, and flexible working. One of our Core Values, which we use as a selection criteria for recruit, assess performance against, and demonstrate consistently, is 'Respect' which we define as including 'treating others as equals'.
Pricing
- Price
- £25,000 to £40,000 a licence a year
- Discount for educational organisations
- Yes
- Free trial available
- Yes
- Description of free trial
- A free instance of the service with limited users and user roles for a period of 6 months. Set-up support and customisation may be charged depending on complexity.