Online Consent Enables a Randomized, Controlled Trial Testing a Patient-Centered Online Decision-Aid for Medicare Beneficiaries to Meet Recruitment Goal in Short Time Frame

Abstract

Online consenting allows potential participants of research projects to deliberate their participation at their own pace and may be more cost-effective than conventional approaches. Yet, online consenting is not widespread in health services research due partly to concerns about security, confidentiality, and lack of established processes. We report our use of online consenting to successfully enroll over 1185 Medicare beneficiaries in a short 9-week time frame for a research study.