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Corporate Responsibility Report 2008

Maintaining the confidentiality of research participants

It is vital that medical information collected during research is protected to maintain the confidentiality of participants. We have rigorous procedures to control the use of research data.

Our research activities are conducted according to fundamental ethical and legal principles, including consent and ethics committee approval. We use a variety of procedures to protect the confidentiality of research participants’ data, including data coding, data encryption and restricted access to research databases.

Third parties handling research data on our behalf are required to comply with relevant data protection legislation and standards.

We only collect information about individuals that is relevant to the research study. This includes medical information such as health status, medical conditions (including, on occasions, genetic data), treatment of conditions and ethnic origin. This means that, in the vast majority of instances, we do not collect or store information that can directly identify individuals such as initials, names, addresses or personal ID numbers. Information that can identify individuals is only used in very specific instances required by law and regulations such as safety monitoring and pharmacovigilance.

We retain medical research data using the minimum amount of identifying information and only for the duration reasonably necessary to meet regulatory, legal or research needs.