When a patient goes to a hospital or clinic, they might not realize that their digital medical records and blood or tissue samples may get used in ways far beyond what they initially thought. Policymakers thought patients only wanted to be made aware of situations when their examples or tissue were given to people. But researchers at the University of Michigan found that patients would actually like to be made aware of their specimen usage in research and medical studies as well. Results from this study could help policymakers decide when to require health care systems to alert their patients about potential sharing with universities, drug, biotech, and device companies and when to allow identifiable information to travel with the data or samples.
