The Animal Care Committee, the Office of Animal Ethics and Compliance and the Animal Care and Veterinary Service jointly employ the integrated electronic application TOPAZ Elements for animal use protocol review and approval, animal orders, and animal cage management.

Animal Protocols

You can access the Animal Protocols Module from any platform (PC, Mac, tablet) using any popular browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, etc).

Animal Orders, Animal Census, and Animal Billing

These modules require a PCusing either of the following browsers:

  • Preferred: Microsoft Edge running in ‘IE Mode’or Internet Explorer 11 (this option is less secure and only available in Windows 10 or below. If you upgrade to Windows 11, you must use Edge.)

These modules are unfortunately not compatible with Mac computers or other browsers.
 

  • An active Silverlight plugin is required. To install Silverlight, open the browser of your choice (Edge or Internet Explorer 11) and download Silverlight from the following link:
    https://topazti.com/silverlight-download/

     
  • A separate workaround is available for Mac users (uOttawa staff only), if you need to access these modules and no PC is available to you. This will involve connecting to a virtual machine with Internet Explorer 11 on it. Please contact [email protected] if you need to use this option.

General Tips

  1. It is recommended to work in full screen mode as pressing the browser’s back button will exit the application and you will lose any unsaved work. For Mac, press Control+Command+F to enter full screen. For PC, press F11 to enter full screen.
  2. Ensure that protocols are submitted in a timely fashion to ensure continuance of your animal research projects - follow meeting dates and submission deadlines (link to ACC Meeting Dates page) for guidance.
  3. Complete all sections of the protocol. All protocols undergo a preliminary review for completeness upon submission and incomplete protocols will be returned for modification. For amendments, all relevant sections of the protocol must be updated to include the new work.
  4. Multiple species are not permitted on the same protocol. If you have very similar projects that use different species, please fill in the information for one protocol and then contact aecomp@uottawa.ca to assist you with a protocol copy.
  5. A protocol may be funded by more than one grant, and may include up to 3 related studies, provided it does not include multiple standalone studies which would be better served by separate protocols. Protocols must be clear enough that the ACC and veterinary team can understand and follow the proposed work. If your protocol is too large and complex, you will be asked to divide it into two or more smaller protocols.