Awareness and Collaboration Across Stakeholder Groups Important for eConsent Achieving Value-Driven Adoption

Abstract

Background: While the shift to digital technologies is pervasive across multiple industries, the informed consent process for clinical trials remains largely paper-based. Given the inefficiencies in the traditional process and the increasing complexity of clinical studies, the current approach at times may raise challenges with respect to quality, compliance, participant understanding, and trial retention. Electronic informed consent (eConsent) is an enabling clinical technology to potentially address these issues by using multimedia components to create an interactive participant experience and improve data quality. Methods: The TransCelerate eConsent Initiative conducted a multifaceted engagement approach to better understand the perceptions, experiences, and concerns of impacted stakeholders, including participants, sites, ethics committees, and health authorities. Results: While all stakeholders were supportive of the use of multimedia components to deliver study information, several stakeholder-specific concerns were noted. Participant feedback, as collected through surveys (n = 3045) and an advisory board (n = 10), suggests that some participants may have data privacy concerns and a diversity of preferences for multimedia presentation. Site interviews (n = 9) suggest concerns related to additional operational activities and potential for technology failure. Health authorities’ feedback, through nonbinding meetings, was geographically varied; ethics committee feedback, through interviews, suggests concern over impact on operational process changes. Conclusions: While the appetite for eConsent is increasing, involved stakeholders and industry must continue to raise awareness, communicate, and collaborate to develop appropriate technological capabilities, regulatory pathways, and operational processes to clear the path for mainstream use of eConsent.