VIGOR++ Secures Ethical Approvals for Handling IBD Patient Medical Data
The VIGOR++ consortium has obtained approvals by the local ethics committees for use of patient data from its two clincal partners. The approval by AMC concern anonymised, retrospectively acquired colonoscopy and MRI data in the AMC from two distinct patient populations: a) Patients that gave informed consent in a prior scientific study that was previously approved by the local medical ethics committee; b) Patients from which MRI and colonoscopy data was acquired for regular care. The patients had already given informed consent for use of this data in scientific research. The ethics committee refers the approval for use of this data to the head of the department.The approval by UCLH allows it to share selected MRI datasets and relevant clinical results from datasets acquired as part of routine clinical practice at UCLH. These are studies where UCLH performed MRI on patients just before they underwent surgical resection. This is an ongoing study in which UCLH collects clinical and questionnaire data on patients undergoing MRI. UCLH has amended this project so that it can recruit patients referred for endoscopy (ie for the 75 patients UCLH will recruit in VIGOR++), plus to datashare.
Copies of all ethical approvals by the competent legal local/national ethics committees have been submitted to the European Commission prior to the commencement of the related research.
