Ethics Committee of the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University

The Heidelberg Ethics Committee has introduced a new platform for the submission of research projects acc. to sec. 15 of the professional code of conduct (“other studies”) called Ethikpool (https://ethikpool.med.uni-heidelberg.de). Ethikpool is already used by many ethics committees in Germany. It not only enables guided submission of applications, but also allows applicants to view the applications they have submitted. In addition, the administrative office of the Ethics Committee will be able to provide requests for additional information as well as votes on studies via Ethikpool.

New applications for research projects must be submitted via Ethikpool as of 4 May 2026.

With several hundred applications for research projects per year, it is not possible to transfer all previously submitted studies to Ethikpool immediately. For this reason, amendments and revised submissions relating to applications that were submitted before 4 May 2026 must, for the time being, continue to be submitted via the previous submission platform (https://ek01-hd.de). The Ethics Committee plans to transfer applications for studies submitted before 4 May 2026 to Ethikpool on a case-by-case basis in the future and to grant the PI access to them. A prerequisite for this is that the PI has created a user account on Ethikpool. Once an application has been transferred to Ethikpool, all amendments or revised submissions must be made via Ethikpool from that point onward.

If you have any questions, please contact the administrative office of the Ethics Committee.  

Links in emails or cover letters

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. 

accepted file formats

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.