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Blizard Institute - Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry

Data safety and security

What happens to the samples that you give to the study?

We would view your donation as a gift for the purposes of scientific research.  Samples will be stored in locked freezers located in approved locations in the Blizard Institute, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry and access will be restricted to responsible individuals within the Blizard Institute.

Samples collected as part of the present research project may be used by Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry for future medical research.

If at any time, you would like to withdraw from the study, your samples would be destroyed.

Will my data be confidential?

Yes. We will follow ethical and legal practice and all information about you will be kept strictly confidential. Information on you that leaves the hospital will have all identifiable information deleted. This will happen to electronic data as well which will be password-protected. You will be allocated a unique study number, which will be used for recording data.

For example, the questionnaire we fill out, the mouth swab/sample, skin swab, tape stripping and skin biopsy will only have your study number, sex and age as an identifier. We will not include your name, date of birth, hospital or NHS number.

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