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MHH: Broad Consent for all inpatients

No quod sanctus instructior ius, et intellegam interesset duo. Vix cu nibh gubergren dissentias. His velit veniam habemus ne. No doctus neglegentur vituperatoribus est, qui ad ipsum oratio. Ei duo dicant facilisi, qui at harum democritum consetetur.

Since 15 March 2022, all inpatients at Hannover Medical School (MHH) have been able to support medical research with their treatment data. MHH is part of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and is a partner in the HiGHmed Consortium.

A nationwide standardised consent form enables medical research to obtain broad consent for the use of pseudonymised clinical data for the first time on the basis of the EU General Data Protection Regulation. Such data is invaluable for the medicine of the future.

The patient data will be made available to researchers at other German university hospitals and will also be used for joint, multi-centre research projects. The strict regulations of the EU General Data Protection Regulation are observed: This rules out the possibility of tracing the data back to the original person.

At the MHH, signed consent is valid for 30 years, which means that patient data may be stored and used for research purposes for up to 30 years if the person concerned does not revoke it. After five years, patients are asked for consent again. The stored data may also be used for unforeseen questions. This is an important prerequisite for a variety of research projects - from personalised medicine to the development of AI-based decision-making aids.

More information:
Official MHH press release

A model for broad consent, the so-called "Broad Consent", has been developed by the university hospitals participating in the Medical Informatics Initiative. Here you can find the sample text for patient consent.

Further information on the Medical Informatics Initiative can be found here.

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