ANONYMITY BY DESIGN – HOW IT ACTUALLY WORKS

Confidentiality is a promise. Anonymity by design is an architecture.
On the EPT platform, the link between your identity and your results is not protected, hidden or encrypted – it simply does not exist.

This page explains, step by step, how the platform makes it technically impossible, and not merely forbidden, to trace a result back to a laboratory.

Two different levels of protection

Every interlaboratory provider is bound by ISO/IEC 17043 to keep participants’ identities confidential. This duty is essential, and the EPT platform shares it. Confidentiality, however, is organisational by nature: somewhere in the provider’s records, a link between identity and results exists, and its protection depends on people and procedures.

The EPT platform goes one step further – by choice, beyond what the standards require. Registration and study data live in two separate worlds, with no bridge between them: on one side, the fact that a laboratory registered; on the other, results identified only by a PIN. What does not exist cannot be leaked, requested or disclosed – not even by the platform itself.

How it works, step by step

1 · Register once. You provide your details to join a study – exactly as on any other platform. This is the only moment your identity enters the system.

2 · Receive your PIN. The platform generates a unique PIN and displays it once, on screen only. It is not stored in any retrievable form and is never sent by e-mail. Write it down and keep it safe: nobody – not even the platform – can recover it.

3 · Automatic log-out. Immediately afterwards, the platform logs you out and removes the session cookies. From this moment, your registration and your PIN are no longer connected anywhere in the system.

4 · Operate through the PIN alone. Every subsequent interaction – accessing the study, uploading your data, following its progress – happens through the PIN, with no login and no identity.

5 · Retrieve your results. At the end of the study, your individual report – prepared in accordance with ISO 13528 and the documentation requirements of ISO/IEC 17043 – is available through your PIN. You know which results are yours; nobody else does.

Free of charge means no paper trail

Participation in EPT collaborative studies is free of charge for laboratories.

This is not only an incentive – it is part of the anonymity architecture.

No fee means no invoice, no purchase order, no commercial record in anyone’s accounting: no weak link outside the platform.

The economics of each study are carried by the project organiser, who receives in exchange the complete, exclusive dossier.

A familiar technology

The protection logic is one you already trust every day: it is how card payments work.

When you pay by card, the merchant never handles your card data – a token stands in for it. On the EPT platform, the PIN plays the same role: it stands in for your identity in every interaction with the study.

A proven, everyday technology – applied to laboratory data.

Why the platform was built this way

Collaborative studies validate standards, test methods and legal limits. Their scientific strength depends on who takes part: the more representative the participants, the stronger the dossier.

Public laboratories, control authorities and institutions are often the most qualified contributors – and, at the same time, the ones who can least afford exposure, because their individual results could be misread as official positions.

Anonymity by design removes that obstacle. Every laboratory contributes with complete scientific freedom, and still receives its individual ISO-documented report – for its own exclusive use.

What anonymity does not change

Anonymity protects your identity – it does not reduce the value you receive:

• Your individual report. Prepared in accordance with ISO 13528 and the documentation requirements of ISO/IEC 17043, delivered through your PIN, and usable as evidence of competence for accreditation purposes. The statistical treatment of your data. Every result enters the study protocol with the same weight and the same rigour, whoever submitted it.
• Project-level options. Some projects may offer participants the possibility to disclose their identity voluntarily, for specific purposes defined by the project (for example, a public register or personal certification). These options are always opt-in, always confined to the relevant project page, and never affect the anonymity of the other participants.

Ready to take part?

Browse the open studies and register: your PIN will be waiting for you.