The Philippine Health Research Ethics Board (PHREB) and the National Ethics Committee (NEC) conducted the Workshop on emerging ethical issues in health and health-related researches at the National Institute of Health, at the University of the Philippines – Manila last July 18, 2016 to facilitate knowledge gain on stem-cell therapies/research, data privacy, and social science aspect of research.

Dr. Michelle De Vera, Director of the Institute of Personalized Molecular Medicine – The Medical City and Dr. Mark Pierre Dimamay, Center for Stem-Cell Research Scientist of St. Luke’s Medical Center, talked about the implications of the ethical issues in stem-cell therapies and researches in the country. “Improvements in objective measure of disease-related function are needed to determine whether there is evidence to change prevailing medical practice, as well as justify the imposition of the risks on research subjects,” Dr. De Vera stated. Dr. Dimamay, on the other hand, pushed for the formalization of the national guidelines on stem cell techniques to ensure safety and efficacy of commercially-introduced stem-cell procedures e.g. stem cell procedures in malls.

Dr. Amaryllis Torres, Executive Director of the Philippine Social Science Council, addressed the importance of the social science aspect of health-related researches, says that norms, values, and wellbeing should be considered before, during, and after the research.

Various conditions, exemptions, and applications of the Data Privacy Act vis-à-vis research purpose were introduced by Atty. Francis Euston Acero of the National Privacy Commission. During his talk, he detailed the rights of a data subject in qualitative and quantitative research. “…such rights include to be informed on how his or her personal information will be processed” he added.

A total of 40 PHREB and NEC members took part in the workshop. Participants are expected to formulate ethics guidelines in their respective research ethics committees and policy-making bodies using the new knowledge obtained from the activity.