ReviewCureus2025
Bridging the Gap: A Systematic Review of Digital Consent Tools to Enhance Participation and Procedures in Low-Resource Settings.
Review in Cureus, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Perspectives of parents receiving normal results from genomic newborn screening: a mixed-methods evaluation from the early check program.Frontiers in genetics · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Informed consent is central to ethical clinical research, yet traditional paper-based processes are often lengthy, complex, and literacy-dependent, disproportionately disadvantaging participants in low-resource settings. This review assessed the role of digital consent tools (e-consent) in enhancing comprehension, satisfaction, and documentation quality in low-resource settings, while also examining barriers, facilitators, and scalability. Given the small number of studies identified, findings should be interpreted as preliminary. Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and Cochrane were searched up to August 2025 for randomized and non-randomized trials, observational studies, pilot projects, and systematic or scoping reviews comparing e-consent with traditional methods. Risk of bias was assessed using ROBINS-I for non-randomized studies, AMSTAR-2 for systematic reviews, and the JBI tool for scoping reviews, with findings synthesized narratively. Ultimately, only six studies met the inclusion criteria, underscoring the limited evidence base in this area. Multimedia, offline tablet-based, web-based, and AI-assisted e-consent platforms consistently improved comprehension and satisfaction, while documentation errors decreased markedly in low-resource contexts. Effects on enrollment were mixed, with outcomes influenced by trial protocols and platform usability. Reported barriers included low digital literacy, connectivity challenges, and heterogeneity of tools, whereas facilitators included multilingual adaptability, offline compatibility, and integration into clinical workflows. Overall, e-consent demonstrates strong potential to reduce inequities in the consent process, provided systems are adapted to local cultural, literacy, and infrastructural contexts and aligned with international regulatory standards.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.