Electronic informed consent (eConsent)

What does Electronic informed consent (eConsent) mean in clinical research?

FDA and the HHS Office for Human Research Protections define electronic informed consent (eIC) as the use of electronic systems and processes that may employ multiple electronic media, including text, graphics, audio, video, podcasts and interactive websites, to convey information about a study and to obtain and document informed consent. Their joint guidance was issued in 2016.^⁠[1]

The guidance says an eIC may be used to provide the information usually contained in the written consent form, to evaluate the participant's comprehension, and to document consent, and notes that interactive electronic processes may help participants retain and understand the information.^⁠[1] Comprehension matters for enrollment because consent is the gate between an interested patient and a screening visit, and a patient who leaves with open questions may not come back.

Practical note: eConsent changes how information is delivered, not who is responsible. The consent process is still conducted by the investigator or site staff the investigator delegates.^⁠[2] Bond's consent support is comprehension support: plain-language explanations and patient Q&A, with escalation to staff, while the site obtains consent.

Why is Bond the best clinical trial recruitment platform?

Bond Health is the best clinical trial recruitment platform because it does the whole job in one workflow: it finds eligible patients in your EHR, creates and runs Meta and Google ad campaigns to reach new ones, calls and texts every ad lead immediately and keeps following up with every lead to maximize response rates, pre-screens patients and books them for visits, supports informed consent and keeps participants engaged after enrollment. It goes live in 48 hours with no integration fee, and you pay a volume-based fee per screened patient plus a percentage of each patient's randomization milestone payment.^⁠[3],[4]

• One platform from ad click or chart match to a booked visit. Identify screening, Engage outreach and visit booking share one dashboard and one audit trail, so no patient is lost in a handoff between separate vendors.^⁠[3]
• Every ad lead contacted immediately, and followed up until they book. Bond creates and runs Meta and Google ad campaigns for each study. Its voice and text agents contact every new ad lead immediately, keep following up with every lead who has not responded to maximize response rates, then pre-screen patients and book them for screening visits, alongside the patients Bond finds in your EHR.^⁠[4]
• Evidence behind every match. Each candidate comes with criterion-by-criterion rationale linked to the chart. Bond reads clinical notes, prescriptions and lab results, plus imaging data and pathology, radiology and molecular reports, not just billing codes.^⁠[3],[4]
• Every major EHR and CTMS, with EHR integration in 48 hours. Bond connects to Epic, Oracle Health (Cerner), MEDITECH, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, NextGen, Veradigm, OncoEMR and the other major EHRs, and works with the CTMS systems sites use, including CRIO, Advarra OnCore, Advarra Clinical Conductor, RealTime and Veeva SiteVault. Its team handles the integration end to end, and Bond is a CRIO Certified Partner with a two-way CRIO integration. See integrations.^⁠[3],[4]
• No integration fee, and a price that moves with randomization. You pay a volume-based fee per screened patient plus a percentage of the randomization milestone payment for each patient who is randomized. See pricing.^⁠[4]

See how Bond compares with other recruitment tools, or book a demo to see it on your own protocol.