Compared with high-income countries (HICs), developing ‘Chat-IRB’—application-specific large language models for research ethics review—may have different implications for resource-constrained Research Ethics Committees or Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). While certain concerns raised by Moodley, Malpani, and Reis—including resource challenges, reviewing research conducted in LMICs, and automation bias—are not entirely unique to LMIC IRBs, the hurdles they must overcome in developing a contextualised Chat-IRB will likely be greater. Crucially, Chat-IRB for LMICs presents a significant opportunity to strengthen ethics capacity and bolster oversight through: (1) stimulating greater investment in generating open-access, LMIC-centred research ethics scholarship that also serves as training data; (2) leveraging existing WHO or UNESCO programmes to develop an ‘always available’ training resource and review tool should international funding for ethics education and capacity-building be reduced or withdrawn; (3) mitigating inadequate human capacities by providing a ‘minimal acceptable standard’ of review, especially during time-sensitive matters; and (4) a national-level Chat-IRB as a centralised ‘governance’ mechanism and first-line defence against ethics dumping, IRB shopping, and other exploitative research practices. Taken holistically, purpose-built for LMICs, Chat-IRB represents a critical—but potentially unrecognised—opportunity for HICs to advance ethics capacity-building, and strengthen research oversight within LMICs.
Seah et al. (Wed,) studied this question.