Like everyone the move to home working was challenging particularly from an Information Governance perspective to ensure we maintained our regulatory compliance.
The COVID-19 Research cohort in the NIHR BioResource was set up in response to the pandemic, our focus changed quite rapidly to facilitate this emerging area of research. I was compiling the documentation required to facilitate recruitment, getting approvals, taking on feedback from our collaborators and recruiters, making changes in response to this feedback to try and make it as seamless as possible for the teams on the ground. Collaboration is an extremely important aspect of my role and during that time we extensively talked with our partners, principal investigators (PIs), research teams to best use the opportunity that was presented to us.
Both centrally and at sites all around the country, we had to swiftly set up processes and standard operating procedures (SOPs) to ensure activity and samples adhered with Human Tissue Act (HTA) compliance, collaborating with local HTA Designated Individuals and R&Ds. This was a learning curve for us due to the change in our processes therefore we had to learn swiftly what was required and implement it.
Setup for recruitment had to be done speedy but efficiently and we also had to think carefully about infection control for volunteers and staff when it came to participant facing documentation and making sure everyone was safe.
Although we are not front-line staff, by helping to facilitate good quality research, it does makes me feel like we are playing our part in some way.