Intellectual Property Law

The New Medical Consent

By Frank Pasquale

There is a very interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal on hospitals’ efforts to assure that their patients understand the consent forms they are signing. Here is a description of the VA’s efforts:

The Department of Veteran’s Affairs, with 153 hospitals, has over the past several years adopted a new electronic informed-consent software program that allows patients to use a digital pad to sign the consent forms, which can then be stored in their medical record. The program, known as iMedConsent, includes a library of anatomical diagrams and explanations written at a sixth-grade reading level for more than 2,000 procedures in more than 30 medical specialties.

This is a laudable effort to use computer technology to make new (and old) medical technologies accessible. Certainly a lot more needs to be done on this front. . . .
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Full post as published by Madisonian.net on February 11, 2008 (boomark / email).