Introduction, institutional review

Research involving human participants sometimes require an ethics approval that may be acquired following an institutional review by a nationally coordinated system. Fredrik Karlsson (ethics officer at KTH) explains more about the legal requirements.

Errata for video: Due to revisions in the law, tissues traceable to the donors and saved for research longer than nine months must be held as part of a biobank.

Research-ethical challenges may be equally important to address before, during or after the research process even if a formal ethics approval is not legally required. Therefore, do not rely on that the legal requirement may substitute for researcher's integrity and good judgment.

Conducting animal experiments also legally require ethics approvals as well as a certain education. However, animal experiments may not be done on KTH-premises because we do not have an animal facility. Several other universities in the Stockholm region do have such a facility and may be contacted.

Please go on to the next page for a more detailed explanation of the Swedish ethics review system.