User Centric Makes All the Difference at NWABR and Quorum Review IRB Conference

by Marie-Térèse Little, PhD

The 2015 Revolutionizing Informed Consent Conference session topic Emerging Trends in Research given by Mr. John Wilbanks was especially riveting. Mr. Wilbanks is Chief Commons Officer at Sage Bionetworks and he has focused his career on advancing open content, open data and open innovation systems. With a bridge grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Sage Bionetworks developed and maintains the Participant-Centered Consent (PCC) toolkit . The toolkit was built for architects of clinical studies who are interested in leveraging technology and employing electronic consents in a mobile context with the goal to make their informed consent user-centered, rather than document-centered. Wilbanks demonstrated that the publicly available PCC toolkit contains the building blocks of a visual, interactive approach to informed consent that creates visual summaries of consent forms mapped to key underlying text, for use in software or print. Visual summaries can assist with clarifying key research concepts so the participant is engaged, well-versed and cognizant of the risks, benefits and alternatives of a clinical study. A mixture of icons and text labels are designed to convey the essential concepts of a study in a more intuitive manner facilitating a meaningful and fulsome conversation about informed choices. The toolkit is used to develop mobile-centric informed consent processes for the collaborative clinical studies involving Sage Bionetworks. The tools are used to assist the learning in the consent process and include: tiered information accessed by the participant, pictorial dominant first tier information (with icons, text slugs and labels), a text dominant second information tier and a short learning assessment. The PCC toolkit was developed with the Electronic Data Methods (EDM) Forum, a project funded by the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as a part of the Collaborative Methods Project. With this framework, one can only imagine our participants eagerly participating with fascination and engrossed in this engaging e-consent informed consent process.

 

Marie-Térèse Little, PhD is a volunteer member of Island Health clinical research ethics board on Vancouver Island, B.C. She worked at the Fred Hutch developing novel strategies for reduced intensity bone marrow transplants and she now lives in Victoria, BC with her family. Marie-Térèse is the founder and chief consultant at 4th Dimension Biomedical Research Communications (www.4Dbrc.com) where complex bio-medical and scientific information is distilled into clear, meaningful and comprehensible communications. Stay tuned for additional featured speaker sessions.

People Not Paperwork: Perspectives from the 2015 Institutional Review Board Conference

On July 23^rd in Seattle, WA co-presented by NWABR and Quorum Review IRB, the Revolutionizing Informed Consent Conference brought together scientists, researchers, ethicists and community members to discuss a way to create a better experience for participants in human clinical trials. The “consent document” is a confirmation of the consent process that explains the nature of the research and any risks and benefits to a participant to communication required throughout, but informed consent is an ongoing process. It starts before any forms are signed, and it continues through the completion of the subject’s involvement in the study. A copy of the consent document is reviewed by the IRB before it is presented to prospective participants.

With her daughter, Marie-Térèse Little, PhD, WIRB scholarship recipient.

Guest blogger and biomed community member Marie-Térèse highlights some of the presentations that were fascinating and thought provoking. We appreciate her contribution, each of the participants attending, our speakers, planning committee, our sponsor partners WIRB, CITI and Fred Hutch, and Boston University for supporting the important work of creating dialog among experts to discuss practical advocacy and compassion for human subjects.

People Not Paperwork

It is clear from the thought-provoking presentations from speakers across North America offered at this year’s conference of Revolutionizing Informed Consent that innovation and technology are indeed starting to revolutionize the informed consent process. These seminars challenged the status quo and how we contemplate this important process in the context of clinical research. Mr. Zachary Hallinan, Director of Patient Communication and Engagement Programs at the Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation, presented Barriers to Change in the Informed Consent Process – a Systematic Review, addressing the barriers to improving consent, general environmental factors affecting patient satisfaction in the informed consent process, instruments for measuring consent and how the current informed consent model impact enrollment in clinical trials.

Mr. Hallinan’s findings concerning the many environmental factors within the consent process affecting patient satisfaction include: limited time to deliberate, feeling overwhelmed by the initial diagnosis, being asked to produce a written consent (for patients with life-threating diagnoses), feeling responsible for their own treatment decision, the physician’s medical language and the structure of the consultation, not enough detail and conversely, and too much detail. It is interesting that some patients simply do not want to be responsible for their decision to enroll in a trial.

Satisfaction appears to result from the actual discussion rather than the document itself. Surprisingly, there is no real evidence to suggest that the informed consent document increases or decreases enrollment; however, there was a positive correlation between the informed consent discussion and enrollment rates. This research is valuable and practical because it reminds us in the research ethics community the value of the entire consent process complete with an open, dynamic discussion, not just a document or a signature. Hallinan’s important presentation was both in-depth and stimulating and culminated with a plea to re-focus on the primary goal of educating and informing participants about the trials so that the decisions they make are truly informed. From his comprehensive research, Hallinan recommends that IRB (and REB) policies and procedures be revised to facilitate collaboration between ethics review communities.

Marie-Térèse Little, PhD is a volunteer member of Island Health clinical research ethics board on Vancouver Island, B.C. She worked at the Fred Hutch developing novel strategies for reduced intensity bone marrow transplants and she now lives in Victoria, BC with her family. Marie-Térèse is the founder and chief consultant at 4th Dimension Biomedical Research Communications (www.4Dbrc.com) where complex bio-medical and scientific information is distilled into clear, meaningful and comprehensible communications. Stay tuned for additional speaker sessions featured this month.