Updated guidance for Ionising Radiation

Date: 20 September 2019

The Health Research Authority has worked with its Four Nations Radiation Assurance Working Group, which includes MPEs, CREs, and the ARSAC, to update guidance in IRAS regarding ionising radiation. Most of the guidance is aimed at applicants, but some is also useful for sites, which participate in research.

The question specific guidance on the IRAS project filter page has been updated on the questions “Does the study involve the use of any ionising radiation?” and “Does the study involve exposure to radioactive materials?”. It now gives examples of some of the most common ionising and non-ionising procedures used in research applications. This should help applicants to identify how to answer these questions; answering “yes” to them leads to various additional questions in Part B Section 3 of IRAS being made available.

There is also updated guidance about how to identify whether ionising radiation procedures in an application would be considered as research exposures, and therefore will assist applicants in completing the project filter page correctly. The new guidance is available on the Help section of IRAS.

Research ethics committee staff and the lead nation’s coordinating function may use the above guidance to check that the IRAS project filter page has been completed correctly.

The question specific guidance in Part B Section 3 of IRAS has also been updated, including:

• Confirmation that Lead MPEs need to be registered with the RPA2000;
• Clarification that the maximum number of ionising radiation exposures conducted in the study should be listed in this section;
• Clarification on how to proceed with completing this section of IRAS if an application is being processed through Radiation Assurance

Please note that you need to be logged in to IRAS in an application to see any of the question specific guidance.

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