title: Donor's support tool: Enabling informed secondary use of patient's biomaterial and personal data.
abstract: Biomedical research is being catalyzed by the vast amount of data rapidly collected through the application of information technologies (IT). Despite IT advances, the methods for involving patients and citizens in biomedical research remain static, paper-based and organized around national boundaries and anachronistic legal frameworks. The purpose of this paper is to study the current practices for obtaining consent for biobanking and the legal requirements for reusing the available biomaterial and data in EU and finally to present a novel tool to this direction enabling the secondary use of data and biomaterial.
  
  
  
  We review existing European legislation for secondary use of patient's biomaterial and data for research, identify types and scopes of consent, formal requirements for consent, and consider their implications for implementing electronic consent tools. To this direction, we proceed further to develop a modular tool, named Donor's Support Tool (DST), designed to connect researchers with participants, and to promote engagement, informed participation and individual decision making.
  
  
  
  To identify the advantages of our solution we compare our tool with six other relevant approaches. The results show that our tool scores higher than the other tools in functionality, security and intelligence whereas it is the only one free and open-source. In addition, the potential of our solution is shown by a proof of concept deployment in an existing clinical setting, where it was really appreciated, as streamlining the relevant workflow.
authors.affiliation: Computational BioMedicine Laboratory, FORTH-ICS, N. Plastira 100, Heraklion, Greece. Electronic address: kondylak@ics.forth.gr.
authors.forename: Haridimos
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kondylakis
authors.affiliation: Computational BioMedicine Laboratory, FORTH-ICS, N. Plastira 100, Heraklion, Greece.
authors.forename: Lefteris
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Koumakis
authors.affiliation: Institute for Legal Informatics, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Königsworther Platz 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany.
authors.forename: Stephanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hänold
authors.affiliation: Institute for Legal Informatics, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Königsworther Platz 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany.
authors.forename: Iheanyi
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Nwankwo
authors.affiliation: Institute for Legal Informatics, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Königsworther Platz 1, 30167 Hannover, Germany.
authors.forename: Nikolaus
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Forgó
authors.affiliation: Computational BioMedicine Laboratory, FORTH-ICS, N. Plastira 100, Heraklion, Greece.
authors.forename: Kostas
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Marias
authors.affiliation: Computational BioMedicine Laboratory, FORTH-ICS, N. Plastira 100, Heraklion, Greece; Department of Informatics Engineering, Technological Educational Institute of Crete, Estavromenos 71004, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: Manolis
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tsiknakis
authors.affiliation: Department for Pediatric Oncology and Hematology, Saarland University Hospital, Homburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Norbert
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Graf
mesh_terms: D018070:Biological Specimen Banks / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000592:standards; D035843:Biomedical Research; D016494:Computer Security; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination / Q000941:ethics*; D007258:Informed Consent / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000592:standards; D010358:Patient Participation
keywords: Biobank; Dynamic consent; Electronic consent; Secondary use of biomaterial and personal data