Yep, it is a double whammy from the Health Research Authority (HRA) via me.  Earlier I blogged about the HRA’s new public involvement strategy.  Now I am passing on the following which is self explanatory I think…and I am sure they would welcome your input if you have time.

One of the good things about the revised guidance is that within the template for the Patient Information Sheets it guides people to provide supporting information in response to the following question: How have patients and the public been involved in this study?  This is the direct result of the earlier public dialogue exercise that HRA did – or so I believe.

Dear colleague

Re: Web-based version of HRA/NRES guidance on consent and participant information sheets: request to review and provide feedback

The National Research Ethics Service (NRES) has established guidance on consent and participant information sheets. During 2012, Dr Hugh Davies (Health Research Authority (HRA) Research Ethics Advisor) convened a working group and held a series of workshops to support the revision this guidance.

The resulting revised content has now been converted into a web-based format, which we have just published for consultation-in-use. We would appreciate it if you would review and provide your comments on this revised guidance in its new web-based format.

Our first review of feedback on the consultation-in-use version will take place in early December 2013 and so we would appreciate it if you would provide your comments by end of November 2013. Notes: The web-based format of this guidance for consultation-in-use has been published here. This will be the location for the guidance during the consultation-in-use phase. Once the web-based format of the guidance is finalised it will be moved to the Health Research Authority (HRA) website. To provide feedback please use the short online survey, which is launched from the ‘Feedback’ page of the guidance (my note on this – you will see the Feedback link also from the home page text).

If you are unable to complete the survey then please submit comments by email using the address provided on the Contact page of the guidance. A print/save to pdf function will be added to the guidance following the review of feedback in December.

Whilst the web-based format is in consultation-in-use, we are advising that the existing published pdf of the HRA/NRES guidance for participant information sheets and consent remains the definitive guidance on this topic at this time. On the HRA/NRES website, we are signposting the consultation in use version alongside the existing guidance. As such, this web-based version of the guidance is in the public domain and we would welcome comments from all interested parties.