Dr. Holly Fernandez Lynch

You kind of build up a lot of expertise, you have more resources, more policies, you can improve your ability to review research in that way.

The downside, right, is if you think about who is the customer of any IRB, it is not the research participant.

The research participant has no say whatsoever in which IRB is going to be reviewing the study that they participate in.

But keep in mind, the IRB's whole job is to protect the participants.

Who is picking the IRB, though, is going to be the sponsor.

Yeah, so here's what I can tell you.

There have not been robust comparisons of different types of IRBs and the outcomes that they achieve for a wide variety of reasons, right?

It becomes a bit complicated.

You need to understand a bit about the regulations.

They are pretty bare bones, right?

I was describing before.

Risks and benefits are reasonable, okay?

What does that mean?

Two different IRBs could interpret that in much different ways.

They would both meet the regulatory standard, but one might kind of go above and beyond and make sure that there's even stronger ethical protections in place.

And the other might say, look, this is all the regulations require.

You meet it.

You're compliant.

Go on your go on your merry way.

So if what you're selling is rapid turnaround time and regulatory compliance, it's more likely that you would fall on the minimum side of the spectrum, right?