Healthcare ethics committees have been playing an essential role in safeguarding ethical standards within the scope of life sciences in order to protect and ensure human dignity and integrity.
With scientific research contributing strategically to an improvement in the health of populations and the performance of healthcare units, there came a need to update the existing legislation in this sense (Decree-Law No. 80/2018) thus providing Ethics Committees with the ability to support and encourage a reflection on ethical matters promoting the training and disclosure of information on ethics and bioethics, namely by developing the capacity to promote the integrity, probity, and transparency of institutions fostering the trust, reliability, safety, and integrity of all procedures.
The Egas Moniz Ethics Committee has the mission of contributing to the fulfilment of principles of ethics and bioethics in the institution’s activity, in the provision of healthcare, and in clinical research, particularly in the exercise of health sciences, in light of the principle of human dignity as a guarantee of the exercise of their fundamental rights together with the integrity, trust, and safety of the procedures in force at this institution, where this Committee is a technically and scientifically independent body of an advisory nature.
The ethical review procedure focuses on compliance with ethical patterns and standards, the applicable legislation, conventions and national and international declarations, national permits and ethical approvals, the proportionality of methods, and the conscience of applicants in regard to observing high ethical standards. Thus, this Ethics Committee shall try to provide documentation to support the reflection and creation of ethical values for designing and conducting research procedures.
