Informed consent process is essentially approval of the patient to go ahead with the treatment that he has selected from the various treatment options provided to him.
Electronic signatures can be images of handwritten signatures, voiceprints, signing by mouse-click, or tracing signatures onto electronic documents with finger, mouse, or stylus. These types of signatures present a number of legal verification problems, however, including:
- No proof of whether the document was signed before or after the procedure
- Possibility of the signature being copied from one document to another
- Possibility of manipulating the document after signing
Electronic signatures are still not valid for the use in healthcare sector for the informed consent. So it is important that you obtain the signature on a paper and preserve it physically.