Bonnie A. Brescia Speaks at the Association for Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs Annual Meeting in Washington, DC

April 25, 2011

In the absence of published guidance from the FDA with regard to social media, Institutional Review Boards (IRB) are taking on the new questions presented by social media use in clinical research, according to Bonnie A. Brescia, co-founder of patient recruitment firm BBK Worldwide. At the annual meeting of the Association for Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP) held in Washington, DC earlier this month, Brescia challenged attendees to heed the dramatic changes in the way that today's ePatients define privacy and autonomy – critical concepts in research participant protections. "Medical professionals are disturbed by the potential for inaccurate and under-vetted information posted online," Brescia commented, "but ePatients are equally dissatisfied with information filtered by the same professionals." In response to the growing need for sitting IRB members and staff to understand social media implications, BBK Worldwide's social media training program has been deployed by both commercial and academic IRBs in the past several months.