Skip to main content

Guidelines & Legislation

  1. Home
  2. Resources
  3. Guidelines & Legislation

Search Guidelines & Legislation Resources

The Guidelines & Legislation section brings together compliance guidance, best practice resources and support materials to help you navigate legal, ethical and regulatory requirements. 

To access online training and competency tests, please visit the Online Training section.

Submit a Guidelines Query - 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. Only available to full BHBIA members (you will need to be logged in to access the form. Submit a Guidelines Query

 

Featured Resources

BHBIA/ABPI guidance on reporting adverse events, product complaints and special reporting situations

The Guidance notes on collecting adverse events, product complaints and special reporting situations during market research are produced by the BHBIA in conjunction with the ABPI.

Legal and Ethical Guidelines for Healthcare Data Analytics

BHBIA guidelines are designed to help us all reduce risk, improve performance and make life a little simpler by drawing key information together in one place.

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

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.

Filter Categories

AE/PCS/SRS Reporting - FAQs

Our AE/PC/SRS reporting FAQ resource is a selection of real-life queries from members and the responses from our Ethics Advisor. It supplements the Guidance Notes, but does not cover all topics – please always check the main Guidance Notes document first.

Ethics and Compliance Committee Winter Update 2025 - 4th December 2025

Hear our Ethics Experts discuss their view on the impact of legislative changes in 2025, with a specific focus on the impact of AI technologies.

AE/PC/SRS Collection from Market Research - Quick Guide

This guide is suitable for anyone who needs an overview of the adverse event, product complaint and special reporting situation reporting requirements that apply to market research conducted in the UK.

AE/PC/SRS Data Collection Form

The AE/PC/SRS Data Collection Form as a word document, for your convenience when adapting for specific projects.

MRS: AI Guidance and using related technologies

MRS has produced this guidance to help practitioners act legally and ethically when using AI and related technologies.

New Guidance - What is Research Ethics Committee Approval and When is it Needed?

To introduce the concept of ‘ethics committee approval’ and distinguish between Market Research and Health Research and provide some background on why Research Ethics Committee (REC) approval is not a requirement when undertaking Market Research.

Recording and Observation Guidelines for Market Research Fieldwork

Overall of the key elements that need to be addressed when fieldwork is observed or recorded - this will be particularly useful for companies or individuals involved primarily in fieldwork, especially those who are less familiar with the whole research process.

Guidelines for Observers

This guide is intended for those working outside UK market research functions – e.g. marketing or global colleagues - and should be handed out prior to observation of fieldwork.

Consent Guidelines

Consent is the freely given specific and informed agreement by a person (i.e. the ‘data subject’ or ‘respondent’) to take part in the MR and for the processing of their personal data. This guide summarises what you need to know (and includes all the new requirements under GDPR).

Lawful Bases for Processing Personal Data

An explanation of the lawful bases for processing personal data available to us under GDPR.

Filtering

Clear search