RESUMEN
Lumia et al discuss Murthy and colleagues' commentary highlighting the need to improve Canada's current research infrastructure to support national clinical research studies. Murthy and colleagues note Canada's limited ability to rapidly conduct high-priority research, hindered by the need for separate data-sharing agreements and ethics review at each participating hospital site. They experienced long delays (6 mo to more than 1 yr) in receiving ethics and institutional approvals to conduct our low-risk, multisite observational study evaluating the long-term effects of COVID-19. The main factors that contributed to approval delays included the establishment and approval of data-sharing agreements at each of our 11 study sites (across 6 provinces) and separate, full-board ethics review at 5 study sites. Differences in local requirements for information technology and online security, collection of personal health data, recruitment processes, and data storage and retention also contributed to approval delays.