Research ethics and data access review are two important milestones that rest on the path from clinical innovation to clinical care. Research ethics review ensures the protection of all research participants, while the data access review facilitates collaboration and data sharing among researchers worldwide. Both reviews, however, can pose significant practical challenges when studies involve multiple research sites and across multiple jurisdictions. The adoption of more efficient models for research ethics and data access reviews for these studies is therefore critical to clinical progress, and is supported by illustrating two Canadian examples in this paper. (By Ma’n H. Zawati, http://jmg.bmj.com/content/early/2015/06/03/jmedgenet-2014-102640 )