Secondary use of health care data and left-over biosamples within the 'Medical Informatics Initiative' (MII): a quasi-randomized controlled evaluation of patient perceptions and preferences regarding the consent process.

Background: Data collected during routine health care and ensuing analytical results bear the potential to provide valuable information to improve the overall health care of patients. However, little is known about how patients prefer to be informed about the possible usage of their routine data and/or biosamples for research purposes before reaching a consent decision. Specifically, we investigated the setting, the timing and the responsible staff for the information and consent process.