Roles, responsibilities and liability

Our role in research

The Clinical Imaging Facility (CIF) acts as a facilitation, coordination and cost-recovery route for University of Southampton researchers seeking access to University Hospital Southampton (UHS) research imaging and related clinical infrastructure. CIF can help researchers identify the relevant UHS service, initiate discussions, support feasibility and costing conversations, coordinate access routes, and provide an auditable mechanism for financial transactions between University researchers and UHS services.

Please note that CIF does not act as the research sponsor, chief investigator, co-investigator, clinical service provider, data controller, tissue custodian, ethics holder, governance approver or guarantor of service delivery unless this has been explicitly agreed in writing through a separate formal arrangement. CIF does not take responsibility for research design, clinical interpretation, participant recruitment, consent, sample governance, data governance, health and safety approvals, ethics approvals, regulatory compliance, data storage, long-term archiving, publication outputs or downstream use of data.

Researchers and their sponsoring organisation remain responsible for ensuring that all required approvals, governance arrangements, funding, insurance/indemnity, risk assessments, consent, data-management plans and health and safety requirements are in place before access to UHS infrastructure or services is requested. Researchers must be able to provide evidence of these arrangements upon request.

UHS teams remain in control of any service-specific requirements, operational decisions, local safety procedures, scanner or laboratory access conditions, and delivery of agreed UHS services according to local policies and capacity. Access to UHS infrastructure is subject to feasibility, availability, governance checks, operational priorities and agreed cost-recovery arrangements.

CIF’s role is therefore limited to facilitation, signposting, coordination, activity tracking and financial oversight of cost-recovered access.