$50K CCTS grant goes to UTDB team for 'SmartConsent' research

A team from the UT Dental Branch has secured a $50,000 grant to see whether "SmartConsent" patient consent forms derived from electronic patient records will result in better-informed patients - with no adverse effect on the work flow in the office.

UTDB Executive Associate Dean and Associate Professor John A. Valenza, D.D.S., will work with Muhammad Walji, Ph.D., assistant professor in Diagnostic Sciences, David Taylor, Ed.D, director of Educational and Technology Services at the Dental Branch, and James "Jim" Spence, senior systems administrator, on the two-year project, funded by a Pilot Project Grant from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences.

Only nine grants were funded from more than 157 applications for the CCTS funding.

Valenza said dental patients currently sign a general consent form associated with a treatment plan that lists procedures to be done, indicating that risks have been explained but often without specific information regarding the procedures. With the proposed "SmartConsent", the consent will have those basics, plus much more information specific to the diagnosis and treatment plan.

"If you're having an extraction, for example, the SmartConsent would explain the specific risks associated with that procedure, such as pain, bleeding, infection or a dry socket," Valenza said. "It's the information patients need to make a good decision."

With input from patients, faculty, students, and patient advocates, Valenza's team will develop SmartConsent forms for 10 common dental diagnoses that patients don't always understand well. Fifty patients will be tested to measure understanding of their disease and treatment, degree of "decisional conflict" and overall patient satisfaction.

The team also will measure the time taken to use the SmartConsent forms to "determine its feasibility in a real clinical practice" compared to the traditional consent process.

The Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences is a UTHSC facility in partnership with The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and the Memorial Hermann Hospital System.