Ethics Committee of the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University

Welcome!

You will find everything you need to know about the submission modalities, meeting dates, contacts, processing times and other helpful information here.

We work closely with the higher federal authorities in Germany, with the Association of Medical Ethics Committees and with all other national ethics committees.

Please do not hesitate to contact us directly if you have any questions or are unclear about something.

We wish you every success for your study project!

Current Notifications

One study - one vote possible since 01 September 2025

The necessary amendment to the Professional Code of the Baden-Württemberg State Medical Association enabling the implementation of the "one study – one vote" procedure was adopted in June. The revised Professional Code entered into force on 1 September 2025. From now on, the Heidelberg Ethics Committee will apply the "one study – one vote" procedure.

This new procedure will replace the procedure for assessing research Projects with an existing vote from another German Ethics Committee (Studien mit Vorvotum). A notification to the Heidelberg Ethics Committee will now suffice for participation in a research project under Section 15 BO-Ä, provided that a vote has already been issued by another German ethics committee established in accordance with state law.

The documents required for notification can be accessed and downloaded from the website of the Heidelberg Ethics Committee or of the Association of Medical Ethics Committees in Germany: https://www.akek.de/sonstige-studien/. A guideline explaining the procedure is also available on the Website of the Association of Medical Ethics Committees (currently only in German).

Links in emails or cover letters and accepted file formats

Please note that the complete documentation must always be transmitted with every submission to the Ethics Committee. Sending a link in an email or in a PDF file, which leads to a website or a cloud location from which the documents are to be downloaded is not accepted. The same applies to links to “secure e-mail portals”.

Ethics Committee employees will generally not open any links in emails or in PDF files for information security reasons!

Instead, please use our online platform for your submission: https://ek01-hd.de. This is very easy to use and secure as the transmission to our server is encrypted and the size of the submission is not limited.

If it is not possible for you to submit your documents via our online platform, you may also send your submission to one of the following email addresses:

Application documents AMG aF: V-ETHIK.AMG(at)med.uni-heidelberg.de

SUSARs: SUSAR.ETHIK(at)med.uni-heidelberg.de

Other studies: submission via e-mail is not possible!

However, we advise against a submission via email, as the transmission is not encrypted and the size per email is limited (max. 20 MB/email), which represents a possible source of errors for large submissions which have to be divided into several emails.

When submitting documents, please also note that the Heidelberg Ethics Committee (EKHD) does not accept the following file formats:

.doc / .docx (Microsoft Word)

.ppt / .pptx (Microsoft Powerpoint)

.xls / .xlsx (Microsoft Excel)

.odt (OpenOffice / Libre Office Writer)

.odp (OpenOffice / Libre Office Impress)

.sxc (OpenOffice / Libre Office Calc)

Documents should preferably be submitted as PDF files.

Ethics Committee

Alte Glockengießerei 11/1
69115 Heidelberg

Tel.: +49 6221 56 26460
Fax: +49 6221 56 33434

ethikkommission-I@med.uni-heidelberg.de

Office Hours:

Monday - Friday
9:00 AM - 3:00 PM

The EKHD is the first and only ethics committee in Germany which has a certified integrated management system according to DIN EN ISO 9001 and DIN EN ISO/IEC 27001. The results of the internal/external audits and the continuously collected key data document the quality of our services.