UH to host research compliance conference in Cleveland

University Hospitals Case Medical Center is co-hosting a conference next week on compliance in medical research involving human subjects.

About 400 clinical investigators, study coordinators and research administrators are expected to attend the sold-out conference, scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 16, according to Philip Cola, vice president of research and technology for University Hospitals Case Medical Center (UH).

Broadly speaking, the conference’s major aim is to educate those involved in human research about the risks, regulations and ethics involved with it.

A federal agency that’s also acting as co-host, the Office for Human Research Protections, holds three such regional conferences per year, and this is the first time it’s been in Cleveland, Cola said.

“There’s an enormous amount of clinical research that occurs in this region so bringing this conference here about protecting human subjects is pretty significant due to the volume of that activity,” Cola said.

At any given time, there about 2,800 research protocols and 450 clinical trials active at UH. Between 4,000 and 5,000 patients per year are treated in those trials, according to Cola. UH and Case Western Reserve University spend about $150 million annually on clinical research, he said.

The conference is titled “Building Harmony: Enhancing Human Subject Protections Through Coordinated Regulatory Oversight.”