Institutional review board submissions

Identifies material submitted to, or decided by, a human-research review body rather than the body or compliance topic itself: submission artifacts (IRB submission, protocol amendment, adverse event report) enforce with a submission field, committee/governance anchors need two independent submission fields, and committee descriptions alone remain discovery-only.

Type: regex
Engine: boost_regex
Confidence: medium
Confidence justification: category-aware structural regex with anchor and context constraints replaces phrase-only detection. Added context gating and exclusion rules improve precision and reduce incidental matches.
Detection quality: Topic false positive
Jurisdictions: global
Regulations: GDPR, AML/CTF Act (Cth), HRIPA (Cth), IPA 2009 (Qld), My Health Records Act 2012 (Cth), NDB Scheme (Cth), Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), TIA Act 1979 (Cth)
Data categories: pii
Scope: wide
Risk rating: 8
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?is)\b(?:institutional\s+review\s+board|IRB\s+submission|ethics\s+committee|human\s+subjects\s+research|research\s+protocol|ethics\s+approval|IRB\s+approval|ethical\s+review|research\s+compliance|protocol\s+amendment|adverse\s+event\s+report|human\s+ethics)\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

institutional review board submissions, institutional, review, board, submissions, education, research, administration

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

institutional review board — Primary topic phrase match
irb submission — Case-insensitive topic phrase match
ethics committee — Alternative topic phrase match (same-span — discovery inventory only; enforcement now needs separate submission-field evidence)
human subjects research — Additional topic phrase match (discovery only)
IRB submission IRB-2026-041 for protocol HSR-882; amendment 2 received 14 July and determination: approved with conditions. — Submission artifact anchor with identifier, amendment, and determination fields reaches the enforcing tiers
The ethics committee agenda lists elections, meeting dates, and member training with no protocol, application, amendment, or decision. — Committee administration matches the topic vocabulary only (discovery — no submission fields)

Should not match

unrelated generic text without domain phrases — No relevant topic phrases present
placeholder value 12345 — Random text should not match topic-specific regex
student grant — Generic word pair from old broad template should not match
The museum acquisitions committee reviewed three landscape paintings. — An unrelated committee topic satisfies no research-review anchor

Known false positives

Common words and phrases related to institutional review board submissions appearing in policy documents, training materials, HR templates, or compliance guidelines without actual personal data. Mitigation: Require corroborative evidence keywords within the proximity window to confirm sensitive data context rather than general discussion.
In English (as the primary international business language), similar terminology used in formal or administrative contexts (education, professional documentation) that does not constitute sensitive data collection. Mitigation: Layer with additional contextual signals such as structured identifiers, form fields, or database column headers to distinguish sensitive records from general references.
High-frequency pattern matches in large document corpora due to broad regex anchors. Expected match rate is significantly higher than specific identifier patterns. Mitigation: Tune confidence thresholds for bulk scanning. Consider using this pattern primarily as a pre-filter with secondary validation.

References

https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/publications/national-statement-ethical-conduct-human-research-2023
https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/publications/australian-code-responsible-conduct-research-2018
https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A03712/latest/text