Meta consent: a flexible and autonomous way of obtaining informed consent for secondary research

Abstract

With the ever increasing focus on collecting and conducting research in to ‘Big Data’, there is growing pressure on the protection of the individual’s autonomy and privacy. Current debate on the protection of the individual has presented what we believe to be a false dichotomy between ‘dynamic’ and ‘broad’ models of consent. In this paper we propose a new model of consent – meta consent – for secondary research use of data and tissue. We believe it represents a new and better approach to consent that is more sensitive to the preferences and interests of the individual.