Frustrations in benchmarking IRBs: reflections after analyzing the United States' IRB registration database

Like any organization committed to quality, institutional review boards (IRBs) desire to benchmark themselves with their colleagues. In order to do so, there is a need for high-quality, well-validated, and well-populated datasets designed for this purpose. Unlike other areas of healthcare, there are no such aggregated databases of IRB information. Analyzing the largest repository of IRB information--the United States' IRB registration database consisting of approximately 4,500 IRBs--yields some useful results, but given that this database was designed as a registry and not for benchmarking, its use is limited to benchmarking the most basic demographics. If members of the IRB community want to benchmark themselves relative to their colleagues, they will have to look at how other healthcare operations have successfully done it (through private and/or government efforts) and invest the time and resources required to obtain meaningful data.