This page governs all research activities indexed within the MMSx Research Portal, including applied studies, analytical work, framework development, and scholarly manuscripts. Governance practices are reviewed periodically. All research outputs are explicitly labelled by status — misrepresentation of peer-review status is not permitted.
Three Core Governance Principles
Applied universally to all MMSx Authority research — regardless of study scale, setting, or population.
Research questions, methods, and interpretations are grounded in biomechanical principles, physiological plausibility, and conservative inference. No premature claims. No unsupported extrapolation. Findings presented with appropriate statistical caveats.
Human data handled with full respect for privacy, safety, and informed consent. Special protections for youth populations, clinical populations, and assistive device users. No individual is ever identifiable in any published output.
All materials labelled: Active / Preliminary / Preprint / Peer-Reviewed. Misrepresentation or premature claims of peer-review status are not permitted in any MMSx Authority output under any circumstances.
Ethical Oversight & Approval Pathways
Research conducted within the MMSx ecosystem falls into four distinct categories. The pathway applied to each study is explicitly stated in its registry entry.
- →Non-invasive data collection — movement analysis, force metrics, EMG, pressure mapping
- →No experimental medical intervention
- →Internal ethics review, anonymisation standards, consent procedures
- →ClinicalTrials.gov registration not required
- →No direct participant intervention
- →Focused on methodology, scoring systems, or decision frameworks
- →Governed as methodological research
- →Peer-review disclosure applies to all published outputs
- →Studies involving clinical interventions or patient populations
- →Pre-registered on ClinicalTrials.gov before data collection begins
- →GCP ICH E6(R2) compliance required
- →Formal site-level IRB or ethics committee approval required
- →Data Sharing Agreements with all participating sites
- →Site-level IRB approval at each institution independently
- →Pre-registered SAP locked before data collection
- →PI maintains central ethics oversight
- →Adverse event log maintained across all sites
- →Monthly data quality monitoring and audit schedule
Informed Consent & Participant Rights
Entirely voluntary. No coercion, incentive, or professional pressure. Refusal carries zero consequence.
Written consent obtained before any data collection. Consent forms reviewed per site ethics requirements.
Participants may withdraw at any time without reason. Withdrawn data excluded from analysis upon request.
No identifying personal data published. Participants identified only by system-generated coded IDs.
Enhanced consent for youth populations. Clinical populations receive additional safeguards throughout.
Participants may request their own data. Deletion requests processed within 30 days of receipt.
Data Handling & Privacy
- ✓Research analysis and statistical modelling
- ✓Scholarly publication and academic reporting
- ✓Educational advancement
- ✓Normative database expansion
- ✓Framework validation
- ✗Commercial sale or third-party transfer
- ✗Advertising or commercial profiling
- ✗Insurance or employer reporting
- ✗Any purpose not stated in the consent form
- ✗Government submission without explicit consent
Conflict of Interest Policy
Dr. Neeraj Mehta is both the creator of the MMSx-SCAN™ framework and the principal researcher validating it. This is a fully disclosed non-financial conflict of interest — the same position held by the creators of FMS, SFMA, and most foundational movement frameworks. The following independent safeguards are in place:
Research activities are structurally separated from the Bureau of Fitness Standards (BFS) certification body and from commercial education programmes. Certification decisions are made independently by BFS. Research outputs do not directly determine certification outcomes. This separation is maintained in accordance with ISO/IEC 17024 principles.
Reporting Standards Compliance
All MMSx Authority publications comply with applicable international reporting standards. Checklists are completed and submitted with every manuscript.
Applied to all observational and registry studies. Checklist submitted with every manuscript (MMSx-SCAN-STR-001).
Applied to all interventional trial reporting. Flow diagram required for all registered trial publications.
Applied to all systematic review and meta-analysis outputs from the MMSx ecosystem.
Good Clinical Practice compliance for all interventional and multi-site registry studies. Mandatory for ClinicalTrials.gov registered trials.
All human research conducted in accordance with the 2013 revision of the Declaration of Helsinki. Non-negotiable.
All MMSx-SCAN™ assessments comply with IMSO S101 — the published technical standard for movement intelligence assessment tools.
For questions regarding ethical oversight, dataset access, research collaboration, site investigator applications, or academic review participation — contact the MMSx Authority Research Office.