Our service has been reviewed an approved by an NHS HRA Ethics Committee in the UK and Research Donors is licensed to collect and store biospecimens by the Human Tissue Authority.
Our consent form is optimised to ensure our donors are consenting for the full range of research applications, including genetic research and research involving the use of animals, among other uses. These uses are not typically covered by public blood donation services, which can be a major restriction of how samples can be used in the modern research environment.
Understanding our client needs, our consent form is also very clear that recipients of the samples may use them in commercial research and that all intellectual property rights to discoveries made using the samples are waived by donors. This robust consent process ensures maximum flexibility and clarity for our clients working in the biotechnology, diagnostics, medtech and pharmaceutical industries.
Our service relies on volunteer donors who are reimbursed a reasonable consideration for their time and inconvenience whilst attending their appointment. Donors are reimbursed on each occasion that they attend the clinic and participate in screening or donation. There is no different in the reimbursement paid to donors, regardless of the volume of blood that they donate.
A standard donation normally requires that the donor will be at the clinic for 1 hour to complete the screening and donation process. For this, donors are paid an inconvenience fee of £45. When specific donors are recruited for a study at a specified time, or asked to attend the clinic at a socially inconvenient time, they may receive a higher fee.
For apheresis collections, donors are required to attend significantly longer appointments – usually several hours. For this inconvenience, the fee is higher than for short whole blood donations.
