Dear colleagues,

Earlier this month, we wrote to advise you of an update to COUHES Connect that will support you, as a PI or faculty sponsor, in your responsibility to manage the training requirements of your human subjects research team. We are pleased to share that the COUHES Connect system now takes the work out of monitoring and prompting your team.

The new Research Team tab provides dashboard-like visibility into your team’s training status. Beginning on February 28, when an individual has not yet completed a required training, the system will generate reminder emails until the requirement is met.

You are receiving this message because you may need to complete an initial step to validate the training requirements of your team and prevent unwarranted reminders.

Getting started

The Research Team tab will list everyone who is charged to an award for each protocol. As a default, the tab will initially show that everyone is subject to the training requirement. We ask that you go to the tab and deselect any individuals who are exempt from the requirement, and then indicate why they are exempt. To do this:

• Log in to COUHES Connect (Touchstone required)
• Open your protocol and navigate to the Research Team tab
• Review the list of people, their training status, and the sponsored award
• Indicate if an individual is exempt from training

Individuals who are not exempt from training will receive email notifications until they have fulfilled the requirement.

We hope this new functionality will provide you with greater confidence that your teams are fully prepared to participate in human subjects research.

For more information, please see the COUHES website. If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact research-compliance-help@mit.edu. We also welcome your feedback.
 
Sincerely,
 
Leigh Firn
Chairman, Committee on the Use of Humans as Experimental Subjects (COUHES)
 
Greg Moffatt
Chief Research Compliance Officer, Office of the Vice President for Research