MORGAM Manual

Selection of Centres

Contents:

• MORGAM Participating Centres
• MORGAM Associate Centres
• Establishing contact with potential new MPCs

MORGAM Participating Centres

Centres which fulfil the following criteria will be accorded full membership so long as they continue to meet the requirements for the Project, as judged by the MORGAM Management Group. They are known as MORGAM Participating Centres (MPC). The criteria are:

• the data available from the MPC should meet the requirements set in the MORGAM Manual.
• MPCs should provide data at the frequency and in the format required by the Coordinator, the MDC and the MMG.
• any variation in procedures and any difficulties in adhering to the Protocol must be discussed with the Data Centre.
• MPCs should encourage exchange of information and problem sharing.
• MPCs should ensure that MORGAM activities fulfil local and international criteria of medical ethics, e.g. in ensuring confidentiality of data.

MORGAM Associate Centres

Centres carrying out studies which are cognate with MORGAM, but do not meet the requirements of the MORGAM Manual, may be granted Associate Membership by the MORGAM Management Group. The Associate Centres would:

• be encouraged to use the MORGAM methodology,
• be given access to unclassified Project documentation, including access to the Website internal pages
• receive Information Circulars (confidentiality allowing),
• be invited to MORGAM Workshops (possibly at their own expense).

No central data analysis, or quality control evaluation or measures, are normally provided for Associate Centres. An Associate Centre may be in the position to be given full membership at a later stage, and this is to be encouraged.

Establishing contact with potential new MPCs

The MMG may either approach potential collaborators or receive approaches from them. The initial step is to furnish the potential MPC(s) with the most recent Progress Report(s) and a general description of MORGAM. If interest is maintained, the potential MPC should be given the MORGAM website address, password and username. In particular, they should be asked to review the data transfer formats to see how the data which they hold match the MORGAM requirements. Subsequently, the MMG may accord either full or associate membership.