Trust Alliance Adds Three

The Trust Alliance, the recently formed standards and guidelines partnership for online healthcare data collection has greatly expanded its membership with the signing up of three new firms, Medimix, Toluna and UniversalSurvey (SurveyHealthCare).

The not-for-profit organisation was formed in November last year by All Global, M3 USA and Medefield, with the aim of raising standards, encouraging consistency and promoting trust in online healthcare fieldwork. Since then, it has announced guidelines for post-field reporting and added online US physician network Epocrates.

Current initiatives include a 'Universal blacklist' of potentially fraudulent or bad research respondents and a commitment for all members to be independently audited to ensure adherence to the Alliance's procedures.

Medimix has a global online community with access to almost one million physicians and healthcare professionals. Health care respondents among Toluna's broad range of panels include medical professionals of all sorts, plus patients and care givers, and it also develops and manages communities of patients and medical professionals. SurveyHealthCare was founded in 2009 in New York and offers both panel and off-panel sampling methodologies to healthcare market research agencies.

Medimix International CEO Henry Gazay comments: 'maintaining the highest quality in data collection is a constant effort not always understood by the final client. Adhering to The Trust Alliance confirms the promise we make to our clients, to allow them to make complex business decisions in total confidence. What is the true value of a research project if the data are poorly collected? Quality has a cost, but it is priceless.'

The Alliance defines its four areas of focus as Authenticity - proactive monitoring and protecting against potentially fraudulent responders; Transparency in the data collection process; Data integrity; and Response quality - to encourage physicians to provide thoughtful views and responses.

Web sites: www.thetrustalliance.org , www.medimix.net , www.surveyhealthcare.com and www.toluna-group.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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