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Legal and Ethical Guidelines for Healthcare Market Research - including Practical Examples

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The BHBIA Legal and Ethical Guidelines include everything you need, in one place, to keep your market research project running smoothly from a legal and ethical point of view - saving you time and trouble.

  • Legal do’s and don’ts
  • Data protection unravelled (GDPR / UK Data Protection Act 2018 requirements are built in throughout)
  • Best practice recommendations
  • Step-by-step through a project (This makes the Guidelines easy to navigate, and you can also search on key words for the information you need)
  • Terms made easy
  • Ready-to-use forms
  • Practical Examples - The Guidelines include around 60 practical examples in the form of questions and answers (Q&As). These are marked by a question mark within an pink circle – click on the symbol to open the examples.

The Guidelines are updated every year, and changes since the previous version are clearly indicated so that you can see what’s new.  

The following sections in the guidelines have been updated:

  • 4.2 The recruitment agreement and securing consent: Extra detail added relating to: automated decision-making and profiling transparency requirements;
  • 4.5 Handling Data - International data transfers: Added clarification on the use of adequacy decisions, IDTA/UK Addendum transfer mechanisms and the need to consider transfer risk assessments when transferring personal data internationally.
  • 7.1 - Storing and accessing respondent data - Personal data security: Added reference to documented personal data breach procedures and incident management requirements.
  • 8.4 - Information security: Expanded guidance to include ongoing assessment of security controls and recovery arrangements following physical or technical incidents.
  • 5 - Definition of personal data: Clarified to emphasise that an individual may be identifiable either directly or indirectly, including through the combination of information held by different parties. No change to the underlying GDPR definition.
  • Pro Forma 1 Recruitment Script Template: New optional AI consent wording added covering: Option 1 – To add where AI is used only on anonymised research data & Option 2 – To add where AI tools process personal data:
  • Pro Forma 7 Client Agreement to Safeguard Confidentiality of Recordings - Video streaming: Detail added to ensure any copy of video streaming saved on the observer’s computer MUST be deleted.

You should find that the document opens in Adobe Reader, which is needed to optimise your view of the practical examples. If this does not happen automatically, you may need to save the document and then open it with Adobe.

(If you don't have Adobe Reader you can click here to install it, or visit the App store if on a mobile device)

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