Submitting for HREC Review

The St Vincent’s Hospital Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) is an accredited Lead HREC and can review human research applications involving adults over the age of 18 to be undertaken within any NSW Health public health organisation and other participating public health organisations under National Mutual Acceptance (NMA). The NMA scheme has recently been bolstered to include all Australian states and territories.

St Vincent’s Hospital HREC is also able to extend HREC approval to private sites and External Entity Agreements are no longer required.

ALL new applications (single or multisite projects) submitted to the St Vincent’s Hospital HREC (full Committee or HREC Executive Committee) must be submitted via REGIS and must be accompanied by the standard cover letter:

Cover Letter Template - Submission for HREC Review

All new HREC applications regardless of study risk level must be generated on a HREA within REGIS.

For low or negligible risk studies to be reviewed by the HREC Executive Committee, the Research Office must first confirm that the study is appropriate for review as low or negligible risk.

Please submit a protocol or study outline to the Research Office e-mail SVHS.Research@svha.org.au

You will be informed of the decision as soon as possible. 

Please submit this confirmation email with your study documents in REGIS

To submit a project for review by the HREC Executive, please use the following checklist:

Checklist - LNR Submission

Meetings of the HREC Executive Committee are held at least every two weeks and are subject to change at late notice. Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis.

To submit a project for review by the full HREC, please use the following checklist:

Checklist - Full HREC Submission

A full set of study documents must be uploaded into REGIS by the submission deadline for the full HREC meeting. Late submissions will not be accepted.

Please visit the REGIS website to access a series of Quick Reference Guides on how to successfully navigate the system:

REGIS Quick Reference Guides (QRGs)

For HREC Review of early phase Clinical Trials:

St Vincent’s Hospital HREC no longer reviews early phase clinical trials.

As per NSW Health’s Early Phase Clinical Trials HRECs Scheme, all early phase clinical trials must be reviewed by either Bellberry HREC (adults) and Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network HREC (paediatrics)

For further information please click here.

Note that St Vincent's Hospital will accept Bellberry HREC approval for early phase clinical trials only and not for later phase clinical trials or any other human research studies.