Product profiles for treatment in development  should be identified as hypothetical, making clear that this is for the purpose of gaining insights only and that this product does not necessarily reflect a real product that will come to market.

e.g. In the next section of the survey you will be shown a hypothetical product profile. The purpose of this is to gain your reactions to different endpoints and scenarios, and this profile does not necessarily reflect a real product in development.

Product profiles should be blinded (unless there is a valid research reason for doing otherwise) to avoid perceptions of disguised promotion. For example, this profile should be labelled as ‘Product X’ (or similar)

One situation where unblinded product profiles might be valid would be a summary table of existing licensed products for an area, in order to discuss the differences in endpoints and trial design. In this case, additional care should be taken to ensure that the research would not be seen as disguised promotion, and that ethical standards are upheld – e.g. the information is balanced (e.g. similar amounts of information provided for each product), accurate, and that no one product is given precedence