The Methodist Hospital Research Institute will automate all major research administration functions, including the Institutional Review Board (IRB), grants and contracts, Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), and conflict of interest functions, with a new Web-based system that provides researchers a seamless interface to manage their complete research portfolios.

The goal of the new online system is to streamline the administrative processes and allow the investigators to focus their time on research, said Edward A. Jones, vice president and associate director for administration for the Methodist Hospital Research Institute. The new system, will let us quickly automate our core research administration processes before the NIH requires all grant submissions to be submitted electronically by the end of the 2006. We hope this new system will make NIH submissions simple right from the start for our researchers.

The Institute plans to move the IRB module into production this month, followed by the Grants & Contracts module. With the new online system, the Research Institute will route and review IRB applications and funding proposals internally before the funding requests are submitted electronically to the Federal government’s new site, www.grants.gov.

In addition, researchers will have increased access to electronic tools for closer collaboration with budget analysts and financial specialists. This closer collaboration will help researchers accurately complete new government funding forms and research grants, such as the SF424, to ensure a smooth application submission process.

Research procedures are becoming increasingly complex, and forward-looking research institutes like Methodist are turning to Internet-based systems to save time and reduce errors, said Nancy Koenig, executive vice president of operations for Click Commerce. The Click Commerce eResearch Portal was designed to streamline complexity by uniting grants, IRB and other processes on a single platform.

In addition to the Methodist Hospital Research Institute, some of the other leading research institutions in the United States such as the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pittsburgh, Columbus Children’s Research Institute and the University of Michigan use the Click Commerce eResearch Portal for Grants, IRB, IACUC and Conflict of Interest processes. All have joined together to form the Click Compliance Consortium, where they share best practices and collaborate on key issues in eResearch and compliance.