Introduction
The Covid 19 pandemic outbreak caused by Coronavirus has resulted in numerous health related problems in humans. As a result of this crisis, the number of research projects submitted to research ethics committees has increased significantly. The lockdown made it difficult to hold the ethical review meetings due to travel and gathering restrictions [1]. The crisis may be a teacher at times, and COVID19 has taught us a lot. As a result, the hybrid meeting platform became a good option to conduct the ethics review meetings. Participants who were unable to attend the meeting in person can attend it virtually. The advantages of face-to-face and virtual meetings are combined in hybrid meetings [2]. In this article we hereby discus the benefits and drawbacks of the Hybrid mode of meetings for research ethics committees.
The advantages of hybrid meeting platform
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With both virtual and face-to-face options provided, hybrid meetings are incredibly easy and accommodating to attend. The researcher or EC member may attend the meeting from any location.
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Hybrid meetings are extremely safe since they can be held with fewer actual participants and more people attending online and thus aid in maintaining social distancing [2], [3].
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Encourages spontaneous interaction and easy collaboration between the researcher and the members of the ethics committee.
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Hybrid meetings significantly reduce the unnecessary physical presence and travelling of the attendees. In addition, they are more economical and easier to organize [3].
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As the meetings can be recorded in digital format. The EC member can re watch the recorded presentation of the research study if in case required.
The of drawbacks hybrid meeting platform
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The virtual attendee must have a reliable and continuous internet connection.
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Coordination concerns may arise from time to time during virtual meetings. This must be appropriately monitored and resolved [4].
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Acceptance and adaption from researchers and EC members are required for the virtual meeting platforms to operate effectively [4].
The basic features of the virtual meeting platforms:
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Should be able to accommodate more than 50 people so that all the EC members, special invitees, and researchers can attend the virtual meeting at the same time.
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Live streaming, screen sharing for multimedia presentations, and a chatting function for exchanging group and private messages are all required [5].
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The person organizing the virtual meeting, or the host, should be able to manage who enters the committee meeting. The host should be able to enable and disable the attendee's microphone and video component.
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It should contain a recording feature to record the meeting's proceedings for documentation purposes.
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5.
Should be capable of resolving cybersecurity issues by preventing viruses and hackers.
Conclusion
Overall, the hybrid meeting platform will improve the EC's review process and benefit many people. We advocate conducting a hybrid meeting platform for the EC review process to make use of the benefits of both face-to-face and virtual meetings.
Author contributions statement
All the authors have shared the research related work. The second and corresponding authors have done worked on Conceptualization and review and editing the article.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
References
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