What is informed consent?
Informed consent is a formal medical procedure aimed to apply the principle of autonomy of the patient, meaning the obligation to respect patients as individuals and to honor their medical care preferences.
eSalud refers to health care practices all supported by information and communications technology (ICT)
In some cases such as the doctor\’s physical examination, the consent is implicit and tacit. For invasive and significant risk procedures or those involving the use of alternatives the informed consent must be signed and made in writing by the patient. This consent is the patient\’s legal right and an obligation for the health services ( doctors, nurses, anaesthetists…)
Informed consent is regulated in Spain by Law 41/2002 and Law 14/2007 on Biomedical Research. There are many types of informed consents that affect many areas and overall processes of a hospital, health center or clinic. Due to the number of consents generated on a daily basis all information and risk procedures contained in the document pages are a key point to start the paperless process.
How many signatures do you need for the informed consent?
Informed consent require at least two signatories:
1.- The patient
2.- Healthcare professionals
While the health care staff can easily sign the documents using the digital certificate, this is more complex in the case of the patient as it may be happen they do not have a digital certificate or simply the patient is unaware of its existence.
This requires the use of digitized signature, conducting a biometric capture of the patient\’s handwritten signature which is inserted in the document in electronic format, storing a variety of legal evidence to safeguard the legal coverage of the signed document
Informed consent can be carried out with devices such as Wacom (compatible with desktop computers or Tablet PCs), or tablets to accurately capture and store a signature-associated point cloud.
In such scenarios, the ideal solution is our e-signature product Viafirma.