Informed consent, the time-consuming process for obtaining permission to conduct health-care research on a person, was developed long before computers, the Internet and smartphones. Last year, when government regulators proposed to add an even greater burden of paper, red tape and so-called patient protections to this process, a team of bioethicists cried foul. And they took the issue to the public via a cross-sectional survey study that was published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
What the survey respondents said surprised them: Keep the permissions simple, but always ask permission, even when the research only involves anonymized medical records.
"The good news was that most people said that they would accept simpler approaches to granting permission, even verbal permissions, if requiring written agreements would hinder this type of comparative-effectiveness research," study author Mildred Cho, PhD, associate director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, said in our press release.
Bioethicists from Stanford and the University of Washington are on the leading edge of addressing the ethical challenges of evolving research methods, where researchers will increasingly use data from wearable devices, electronic medical records, genomic databases and other sources to help improve our population's health.
In an editorial accompanying Cho's article, John Lantos, MD, from Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics, summarized the importance of the study:
Cho and colleagues challenge us to think of a better way. Autonomy should mean participatory engagement. Respect for persons should mean empowering them to develop the rules. It is time to ask whether a system in which the fundamental principle is 'respect for persons,' can continue to ignore the preferences of many of the persons it claims to respect.
As a next step, the bioethicists will be developing media-rich tools to explain the risks and benefits of research that uses electronic medical records and stored biological samples. For example, the video above was developed to explain the concept of informed consent to survey respondents unfamiliar with research terminology.
Previously: Build it (an easy way to join research studies) and the volunteers will come, Harnessing mobile health technologies to transform human health and Video explains why doctors don't always know best
Video by Booster Shot Media
