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Should Product Reviews be Anonymous? See the Clinical Debate & Vote!

SelectScience
28 Apr 2014
Sonia Nicholas
Managing Editor and Clinical Lead

Industry news

Clinical product reviews should be anonymous. We invite 2 clinical scientists to give their opinion.

FOR

Mark Nicholas

I am a Senior Biomedical Scientist and the Hematology Quality Manager for a large UK Hospital. I am happy to leave reviews for the products that we use in our laboratory, however I am not comfortable with having my name and place of work documented with the review. We have managed service contracts which require us to work with certain manufacturers, often for a number of years. It is important that we maintain good relationships with these service providers. I would be worried that leaving a negative review would impact on this relationship, and also that my comments would be taken as being the views of the whole of our Trust, which they are not necessarily.

Mark Nicholas, Bristol Royal Infirmary, UK

AGAINST

Vladimír Mikan

“I have had 42 years of experience working in clinical laboratories, in different countries and in leading positions. I also spent some years as a Product Manager for manufacturing companies delivering instruments and services for laboratories. This means that I understand both company and hospital laboratory policy.

Anonymous reviews might give you more detail as reviewers may feel they can be more open and honest with their comments, you might also get more experts leaving their reviews (named reviews may stop some experts from leaving their reviews). However, the validity of the reviews would be reduced if they were anonymous, and how would we know if a company was leaving a review for themselves? In my opinion, for decision makers, named reviews are more important. For example, I know who is who in the Czech and Slovak clinical chemistry society, and reviews from certain laboratories and scientists have greater value for me than others.”

Ing. Vladimír Mikan, Laboratory Manager, Regional Hospital Jičín, Czech

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