> I feel my concept of informed consent goes beyond,..
> look at the way sugical consent is now aquired and
> compare this with the way it used to be
I agree, and I feel that as time passes consent to information
sharing will become more explicit and user-friendly. In ten
years' time, for example, I think it will be routine for
patients to access their records over the web - with suitable
safety and privacy mechanisms - and see not just the access
conrol lists on the various parts of the records but even, if
they wish, the log of who accessed their records and when.
This may well extend beond medicine to fields such as banking
where an access log that was open to the customer could do a
lot to curb abuse. This has been publicly proposed by lawyers
working on banking cases. Banks may object at the cost of the
extra storage. But it will only take one of them to offer it
as a feature and they all will.
For the meantime though a lot of progress can be made by
encouraging the laggards to catch up with best current practice
rather than trying to persuade everybody to redevelop their
systems or take on a great deal more paperwork
Ross
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