A company commissions a research agency to test a new digital health product. Participants are recruited online and asked about their health behaviours, medication use, and attitudes toward treatment. They consent to take part. The data is anonymised. The findings will inform product strategy, and may later be presented externally. No ethics committee is involved. At first glance, this feels routine. It is, after all, “just market research”. But pause for a moment.

Ethics committees have traditionally relied on face-to-face meetings to review research applications. But as research volume increases and timelines tighten, this model is being challenged. Increasingly, committees are adopting asynchronous (or “rolling”) review processes, where applications are assessed independently and decisions are made without real-time meetings. So which approach is better?

In New Zealand, there is no single “ethics committee” that covers all research. Instead, the system is made up of multiple organisations, each with a distinct role. Understanding how these pieces fit together is essential; not just for compliance, but for conducting ethically sound research.

Not everything that involves people is research — until it is. The distinction between outreach and research is often blurred, and projects can move between the two over time. What matters is recognising when that shift is occurring and responding appropriately.

When 2012 reforms shut community researchers out of NZ's health ethics committees, former HDEC chairs built NZEC — a free, independent committee treating applicants with dignity. AREC replaced it. When demand from paying clients overwhelmed AREC, IHREC was created to charge commercial and government researchers — protecting the free pathway by funding a paid one beside it.