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28 February 2018
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Q. Do I need a patient's consent to enroll them in research projects?

A. The capture and sharing of clinical patient information for research purposes should be anonymised. Exceptions to this arise where legislation is in place to allow analysis and research on patient identifiable clinical information. Examples of this include the National Cancer Registry and Infectious Disease regulations. Where research involves identifiable patient clinical information, explicit patient consent must be sought by the GP and documented in the patient record. Where the data is anonymised, it is no longer personal data and data protection regulations do not apply. In general the concept of data minimisation and anonymisation should be maintained. Where informed patient consent is used as the legal basis for research, the data controller must be able to demonstrate that consent has been forthcoming and must allow for the right of the patient to withdraw consent at any time.