Towards an understanding of the ethics of electronic consent in clinical trials.
Sahan K., Wijesurendra R., Preiss D., Mafham M., Sheehan M.
There are good practical reasons to use electronic consent (e-consent) in randomised trials, especially when conducting large-scale clinical trials to answer population-level health research questions. However, determining ethical reasons for e-consent is not so clear and depends on a proper understanding of what e-consent means when used in clinical trials and its ethical significance. Here we focus on four features of ethical significance which give rise to a range of ethical considerations relating to e-consent and merit further focused ethics research.