Is your health research exclusively involving secondary use of data or human biological materials?

Secondary use of data/biological materials refers to both:

• Retrospectively* accessing data/samples that has already been collected for a different purpose to answer a research question (e.g. research using medical charts); and

• Re-analyzing an existing research data set with a different research question.

* Note: in order for a study to be considered retrospective, the end date of data collection must be before the date of submission to the REB.  Therefore, your study will not involve collecting any information prospectively.

Both types of secondary use require ethics review.