The organisation was formed in November 2011 by founder members All Global, M3 and Medefield, but it decided earlier this year to admit new members – of which Epocrates is the first.

Adam Budish, SVP of sales at Epocrates, said: “The value of research is in its quality and integrity, which is only as pure as the survey respondents. We need to create broadly accepted standards across the industry to maintain the strategic role of research in making key business and brand decisions.”

The first initiatives to come out of alliance is the universal blacklist of potentially fraudulent or bad research respondents.