A potential source of funding for the site
Hi Guys,
I have suggestion to the board: We have here invaluable information that can be sold to research institutes and vendors for supporting our activity. We can do the following:
1. Post a questionnaire to all site members in order to collect data about their problems, treatment, equipment in use, success stories, failures etc. This can be done completely anonymous.
2. Create a structured database with all the responses.
3. Go to the market and try to sell the data to however is interested.
As a retired research fellow, I think it is feasible that few customers will be found.
Thanks,
Arik
RE: A potential source of funding for the site
I appreciate your interest in helping to fund Apnea Board. However, there are two problems with selling research data, as you have suggested. First, Apnea Board is a noncommercial educational entity, and is dependent on the Fair Use exemption to U.S. copyright law in order to help our members. Selling research data would make Apnea Board a commercial entity, and we would lose the Fair Use exemption. Second, polls sometimes appear in Apnea Board, but only about 10 or 20 members respond. No one would ever purchase market research based on such a small sample.
RE: A potential source of funding for the site
You are right on both topics. I speculated that hundreds will respond.
Arik
RE: A potential source of funding for the site
There are ways to get more people to respond to a poll, of course and we could eventually get several hundred to respond.
But Dave is correct - selling our members' data would be against our privacy policy and other policies, and most importantly, would likely harm our status as an educational entity, and void our claim of "Fair Use" under US Copyright Laws, insomuch that we'd be unable to legally distribute copyrighted Clinician Setup Manuals. That's a big deal and it's the primary reason we can't do something like that. Good idea, otherwise. Most of our funding currently comes from
member donations, plus a small amount from ads that help defray our costs. For now, those are the only two allowable methods for raising money to offset our server costs.
SuperSleeper
Apnea Board Administrator
www.ApneaBoard.com
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