Governing health services research: is it working?

Research governance is an issue that constantly troubles our members who feel that a system that has been set up to deal with clinical research unfairly places an excessive level of regulatory burden on much lower risk HSR, which is largely non-clinical and non-invasive. As part of HSRN's programme of work looking at this issue, we commissioned Mary Dixon Woods and Karen Yeung to write this viewpoint to help us understand and provide some questioning of how the current system operates. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the HSRN.