With the pandemic caused by COVID-19, the continuous need to obtain information has pushed people to rely on unreliable sources, thus fomenting the spread of misinformation.
For this reason Gilda D'Incerti, CEO and Founder of PQE Group, global quality service provider for Life Sciences since 1998, decided the past year to create a task force of employees to perform researches on one of the most discussed side effects of Covid-19: the Infodemic.
Among the 800 employees of PQE Group, 24 of them have been selected for the project. Experts consultants in Chemistry, Engineering and Pharmacovigilance had the chance to come together to work on one of the most international task force of researchers. The aim was to investigate, in a methodical and systematic way, the most salient aspects of five main areas of information - such as science, ecology, big data, social economy and legal - which in the last months since the start of the pandemic have largely contributed to shape the public debate.
The team is working to provide information as much as possible via the corporate communication channels scientifically correct and updated on these topics, reporting the results obtained in a clear and simple manner.
In order to guarantee data security, two internationally renowned pharmaceutical auditors have been selected to support the team: Claudio Puglisi, Vice President of PQE Group and Executive Committee for external relations of the Parental Drug Association (PDA), and Paolo Baroldi, who before becoming a consultant for PQE Group in the US served as Vice President of Development and R&D Chairman at Chiesi Farmaceutici SPA.
One of the main benefits of this research is also the cultural diversity of the task force, as the people chosen for this project are from the main countries affected by COVID-19 such as Italy, Spain, Japan, India, USA, Mexico and Brazil. In this way, in addition to deepening different points of view, the various teams will have access to cross-cutting information, capable of making the news more reliable.
As of today, the first team of consultants already concluded the first round of researches, and the company is currently putting together a second task force to evaluate the pandemic's statistic data, therapies' effectiveness and cold chain's issues for logistic and distribution.
"The idea of the Infodemic Task Force project stems from the fact that back in March 2020 we were bombarded with a lot of conflicting information: some, perhaps the most interesting, were largely incomprehensible to those who did not have a scientific background. Therefore, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to have many colleagues who instead had this background, to launch a dissemination initiative, trying to create clarity and a common vocabulary in terms of scientific terminology for the general public and for the community of PQE Group." Gilda D'Incerti, CEO and Founder - PQE Group.
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