Guidelines & Legislation

Guidelines & Legislation

The BHBIA's Guidelines & Legislation area is divided into sections, each of which contain different types of compliance guidance and support materials to help you.


If you know which section you need, you can click on the sub-menu links to go directly to the relevant resources.

Otherwise, take a look at 'What's included in each section?' below - and click on the downward arrow beside each heading to see a short description of the section and a button to access it. 


If you have a question that is not answered in the BHBIA’s guidance materials, you can submit it to our Ethics Advisor and receive a confidential response - see Online Enquiries (via 'My BHBIA dashboard - only available to full members - you will need to be logged in to access the form).

To take the online training / competency tests please go to the separate Online Training section.


Guidelines & Legislation - What's included in each section?
  • Your essential guide to legal and ethical requirements at each stage of a market research project – easy to navigate and search. The Guidelines now include practical examples to bring the guidance to life
  • Also includes pro formas for market research – in Word format for you to adapt and use
View Section
  • Joint BHBIA/ABPI guidance notes explaining the requirements for reporting AEs/PCs and SRSs collected during market research
  • Also includes the recommended data collection and reconciliation forms – in Word format for you to adapt and use
  • FAQs covering selected AE/PC/SRS reporting queries from members
View Section
  • These guidelines focus on the legal and ethical requirements when collecting, processing and storing secondary data for UK healthcare BI use - e.g. database building or customer relationship management
  • We previously offered a series of short guides for analysts and these have now be consolidated into this comprehensive and easy to navigate document
View Section
  • A series of short guides based on the Legal and Ethical Guidelines
  • Cover key topics in a easy to read format suitable to print and carry with you or hand to colleagues or clients/suppliers
  • Only selected topics are covered; they are not a substitute for the full Legal and Ethical Guidelines
View Section
  • Short guides covering various key aspects of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the UK Data Protection Act 2018.
  • Also includes FAQs covering selected data protection queries from members, Materials from BHBIA meetings on this topic and News updates
  • N.B. The latest data protection requirements have been incorporated into all the BHBIA’s guidance documents - but the Data Protection guides in our series provide additional detail on key areas.
View Section


Guidelines for Incentive Payments Within Market Research 

BHBIA members are encouraged to use this guide to reduce problematic pressures on respondent incentive payments based on ‘fair market values’, known as FMVs, during the primary market research process. 

The guide is designed to help our members remunerate those that participate in healthcare market research fairly, protect the quality of the sample and the quality of the data produced, whilst working within the necessary industry regulations and company requirements.

View section

Further Support

  • In addition to regularly updating all our guidance materials, we occasionally post a specific update in our News Blog - e.g. if there has been an important change in guidance or legislation that may affect members. 
  • Please also make sure that you have opted in to receive our emails, as we provide a quarterly round up of ethics and compliance news via email.
View the BHBIA News Blog Update your contact preferences
  • If you have a question that is not answered in the BHBIA’s guidance materials, you can submit it to our Ethics & Compliance Advisor and receive a confidential response
  • Only available to full BHBIA members (you will need to be logged in to access the form)
Submit a Guidelines Query
  • Find out the latest committee news and see who the members are
View Ethics & Compliance Committee

This resource section is designed for people who do not work in healthcare business intelligence, but who may need to know more about the work we do in our industry, for example because they have been invited by one of our member companies to take part in a market research project.

View the 'What is Market Research?' resources