- Conflict of Interest
It is the interest of the Brighton Collaboration to protect and preserve public health. Any perception that for-profit commercial concerns, any biases or conflicting interests arising from an organizational affiliation or any financial interests were influencing decisions made by participants in the Brighton Collaboration would damage its scientific credibility and independence. The essential activity of the Brighton Collaboration is the development and evaluation of standardized case definitions and guidelines for data collection, analysis and presentation, in individual working groups according to procedures agreed by the participants in the Brighton Collaboration. The development of any document must be free of any real or perceived bias due to the receipt of any benefit
in cash or kind, any hospitality, or any subsidy derived from any source that may have or be perceived to have a financial interest in the outcome of the document. All participants in the Brighton Collaboration must accept this general principle as a condition of participation in the Collaboration.
1) Each participant shall disclose any potential conflict of interest, which he or she may have in regard to the outcome of any activity of the Brighton Collaboration.
2) If any document developed by the Brighton Collaboration raises a question of serious conflict of interest by any user of the respective document, this should be forwarded to the Steering Committee to determine if a conflict of interest is present and if so, to address the concern raised in the document.
3) It is recognized that in highly technical areas, a limited number of persons may have the expertise or time to participate. The participants in the Collaboration seek to ensure that there is a balance of organizational affiliations as well as professional backgrounds among the working groupand reference group participants.
4) If a working group/reference group/committee deems that one of its participants pursues a biased outcome in regard to any of its activities, he or she shall refrain from participation in this working group/reference group/committee. The Steering
Committee will need to give its approval over the decision to remove such a participant from the respective group/committee.
5) As safeguards, all draft case definitions and guidelines developed by Brighton Collaboration working groups undergo review by reference group participants including members of the Steering Committee from around the world before they are finalized in the respective working group for use. Furthermore, feedback is solicited from users with actual experience of implementing Brighton documents in the respective study settings, and revisions to case definitions and guidelines will be made based on the feedback received.
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