An important part of reporting to OLAW for PHS fund recipient institutions is reporting of non-compliance for incidents that impact animal welfare. The requirements are clearly summarized on the OLAW pages, but of course, leave the internal administrative mechanism up to the institution.
These incidents are hopefully rare and as such, it may be that the IACUC is happy to handle these directly using Word documents or other “offline” forms, but did you know that you can track these within Elements?
A number of customers have created form sections within either Amendment or Interim Review forms to allow PIs to report incidents of non-compliance, protocol deviations, or adverse events. These can then be submitted to the IACUC for review, just like a protocol.
To make this work efficiently, there are a few considerations. However, by setting up these form variants appropriately, you can make them searchable (ex. find me all the adverse events from last year) and easily managed by the IACUC and researchers. Features like the “section prevent copy” are handy here.
Since TOPAZ Reporter has access to all the protocol data, you can even set up your OLAW reporting forms if you wish.
Hopefully non-compliance is not something you have to spend a lot of time on, but if you are interested in finding out how to track this in cooperation with your researchers within Elements, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help you out.
