Post-mortem examinations are of great importance in medicine. They provide vital information for determining the cause of death, identifying medically relevant risks for relatives, gaining a better understanding of underlying conditions and their progression, verifying clinical diagnoses, and improving the quality of care. Patients can now use a standardised, nationwide consent form to give their consent for a post-mortem examination to be carried out in the event of their death whilst in hospital. They can also give their consent for the data and samples collected during the post-mortem to be used for medical research purposes.
This is made possible by the new ‘Consent to Post-Mortem Examination’ module, which the NUM Platform for Autopsies and Pathology has developed to complement the nationwide ‘Broad Consent’ scheme of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII) . The ‘Broad Consent’ system already enables patients to make their health data and biosamples available for medical research.