ORIC is the research office of Link Medical Interface. It supports researchers from the point at which a question first becomes a study through to the point at which findings reach the people they were meant to help — design, ethics, funding, analysis, publication, and, where the work has commercial potential, the route to market.
Under a formal cooperation agreement, ORIC also serves BMU Ventures (Private) Limited, a separately incorporated organisation under common leadership. This lets a single research office support both, without either organisation losing its distinct legal identity or its independent governance.
Why it exists
In this region the constraint on research is rarely talent and rarely even data. It is infrastructure. A clinician with a good question and a full ward has no methodologist to call, no ethics committee to submit to, no one to check the sample size before the study rather than after, and no one to tell them that the funding call they missed closes annually. The study either does not happen, or happens badly, or happens well and is never published.
ORIC exists to be the thing that was missing — a research office of the kind a university would have, made available to clinicians, allied health professionals, early-career researchers, and institutions that do not have one.
What ORIC does
Research support
Support at the stage where it changes the outcome — before data collection, not after. Research question development, study design, sampling and sample size, instrument development, outcome measure selection, protocol writing, statistical analysis planning, qualitative and mixed-methods design, alignment with reporting guidelines (CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, CARE, SQUIRE), and manuscript planning.
Research ethics and governance
Guidance on ethics applications, informed consent documentation, participant information sheets, risk assessment, data protection planning, protocol amendments, adverse event reporting, and study closure. ORIC coordinates ethics review and maintains the records that make a study defensible years later.
Grants
Identifying funding opportunities, checking eligibility before effort is wasted, structuring the proposal, building the workplan and budget, drafting impact statements, and running a submission-readiness check. Support covers national and international research grants, institutional seed funding, collaborative and innovation funding, community-impact grants, travel and conference grants, and student research funding.
Innovation
Development support for medical devices, rehabilitation technologies, digital health applications, clinical assessment tools, assistive technologies, research software, educational platforms, and community-health service models.
Intellectual property
Invention disclosure, prior-art search coordination, ownership assessment, confidentiality guidance before disclosure destroys patentability, and referral to qualified patent and trademark professionals. ORIC does not provide legal advice and does not file patents; it makes sure the right questions are asked early and the right professional is engaged in time.
Commercialization
A defined pathway from idea to market: disclosure, preliminary assessment, market and user-need evaluation, ethics and regulatory review, IP assessment, prototyping, pilot testing, partnership development, licensing or venture formation, and post-launch monitoring.
Researcher development
Training in research methodology, biostatistics, scientific writing, systematic reviews, grant writing, research ethics, good clinical practice, data management, peer review, publication ethics, intellectual property, and science communication.
Institutional linkage
Partnerships with universities, hospitals, research centres, professional associations, government departments, non-governmental organisations, industry, technology companies, funding agencies, and international research networks.
Research ethics — the Institutional Review Board
The Institutional Review Board of Link Medical Interface (LMI-IRB) reviews all research involving human participants, human data, human biological material, or animals conducted by or on behalf of Link Medical Interface, and accepts submissions from external investigators. It operates under written Terms of Reference, twelve standard operating procedures, and the Declaration of Helsinki, the CIOMS international ethical guidelines, and ICH-GCP for clinical trials.
Its decisions are its own. No officer, director, or shareholder of Link Medical Interface may overrule a decision of the Board. Any member with an interest in a protocol — as investigator, supervisor, co-author, or otherwise — withdraws from that item and does not vote, and this is recorded by name. The Board includes members who are not scientists and members who hold no employment, shareholding, or contract with Link Medical Interface. A quorum requires the presence of both. Without them, the Board does not sit.
Review pathways: full board; expedited (minimal-risk, reported to the next full meeting); exempt (defined categories, determined by the Chair, never by the investigator).
Continuing oversight: annual review, amendment review, serious adverse event reporting within seven days (twenty-four hours where fatal or life-threatening), deviation reporting, and a closure report. Records are retained for a minimum of five years after study closure and are available for audit. Every approval carries a unique reference in the form LMI-IRB/YYYY/NNNN, which journals, funders, and registries may verify with us.
Correspondence with the Board is received by its Secretary. No director of this company reads it. Applications and safety reports go to ethics@lmi.education. See Research Ethics for the full process.
Scope and limits
ORIC is a research support office. It is not a regulator, not a funder, and not a legal practice. It does not award grants; it helps researchers win them from bodies that do. It does not grant regulatory approval; it prepares researchers to obtain it. It does not provide legal advice or file intellectual property; it identifies when a qualified professional is needed and refers accordingly. It cannot guarantee that a grant will be funded, a patent granted, a manuscript accepted, or a product approved — those decisions rest with independent authorities applying their own criteria. What ORIC can do is make sure that when a researcher goes to those bodies, the work is ready.
Working with ORIC
Researchers — bring a question, a protocol, a dataset, or a rejection letter. Institutions — partnership, joint research, shared supervision, or help establishing a research office of your own. Innovators — disclose an invention or discuss a commercialization pathway.