Before one institution can rely on another institution’s IRB to provide IRB oversight for a study, the two institutions must document that arrangement through a reliance agreement. The agreement documents respective authorities, roles, and responsibilities between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the other institution. Reliance agreements must be executed on a per study basis, per federal requirements.

Different kinds of agreements may be used to document reliance between sites. UW-Madison uses the following:

• SMART IRB agreement
  • Reliance under this agreement is documented via a joint memo.
  • Neither organization’s institutional official needs to sign this memo, which can help the reliance progress move more quickly.
  • SMART IRB is not an IRB; it is an agreement that helps facilitate the reliance process.
• IRB authorization agreement (IAA)
  • Reliance under this agreement is documented by a standalone agreement that requires a signature from each organization’s institutional official
  • UW-Madison has its own IAA template for use in these situations
  • If the relying site requires revisions to the IAA template, review by legal counsel may be required.

Whichever type of agreement is used, RELIANT facilitates execution of the agreement, working closely with the relying IRB and, if applicable, legal counsel. Note that only UW-Madison’s institutional official can sign a reliance agreement.

As part of our support for the research community, RELIANT handles all aspects of the reliance agreement process. Study teams are not responsible for putting these agreements in place or answering questions from other sites about types of reliance agreements or UW-Madison’s reliance process. If you receive these kinds of questions from other sites or study teams, please reach out to RELIANT and we will handle these queries for you.