Principal Investigator: Dr. Jeffrey Michael Franc
Associate Professor & Research Director
Department of Emergency Medicine
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB, Canada
780-700-6730
jeffrey.franc@ualberta.ca
You are invited to participate in this research study because you - or a patient you are caring for - has registered in the emergency department.
We are studying a new app for emergency department triage. We are trying to see if patients and caregivers find the app easy to use. The app uses artificial intelligence (AI) to determine your priority for medical treatment (Triage), although this score will not be used on your visit today. We will compare the triage score given by the app to the triage score given to you today by the triage nurse.
If you decide to be part of the study, you will be given a QR code to scan with your phone. There you will complete some questions about why you (or the patient) have come to the emergency department. After you finish the questions, you will be taken to a survey where you will be asked to give your opinion about the app. The study should take about 10–20 minutes.
The results from this study will guide future development of Triager app. There will be no direct benefits to you. Importantly, neither you nor your medical providers will see what you entered in the app or the results of the app's calculations. Being in the study does not change the medical care you will receive today.
There is a potential, although highly unlikely, risk of breach in data security. Rigorous protocols are in place to minimize this risk.
During the study we will be collecting data about you. We will do everything we can to make sure that this data is kept private. No data relating to this study that includes your name will be released outside of the researcher’s office or published by the researchers. Sometimes, by law, we may have to release your information with your name so we cannot guarantee absolute privacy. However, we will make every legal effort to make sure that your information is kept private.
During research studies it is important that the data we get is accurate. For this reason, your health data, including your name, may be looked at by people from members of the Research Ethics Board or Health Canada,
The investigator or their study staff may need to look at your personal health records or at those kept by other health care providers that you may have seen in the past (i.e. your family doctor). Any personal health information that we get from these records will be only what is needed for the study.
By opening up the Triager App and clicking on the consent checkbox, you are saying it is okay for the study team to collect, use and disclose information about you from your personal health records as described above.
After the study is done, we will still need to securely store your health data that was collected as part of the study. At the University of Alberta, we keep data stored for a minimum of 5 years after the end of the study.
Triager communicates with a third-party technology (OpenAI) to process your information. All data requests and responses are encrypted. As per the OpenAI privacy policy, your data will not be used to train OpenAI models or improve OpenAI’s service offering. The OpenAI security policy is available at: https://openai.com/security
Data will be stored on Stat59 servers in Canada on encrypted hard drives with ongoing backup. Stat59 enforces strict security and privacy policies which are available here for your reference.
https://www.stat59.com/about/privacy
https://www.stat59.com/about/security
There will not be any direct compensation for participation in this study.
Your participation in this research is completely voluntary. If you do decide to participate, you may withdraw at any time without any consequences or any explanation. Importantly, the study will not delay your medical care. When you are called to your care space you can go immediately. You can complete the tasks on the app later, when you can, or not at all. Due to the anonymous nature of the survey responses, data withdrawal is not possible after the survey has been submitted.
The study team will try to publish information about the results of the study overall - without any names or identifiers - in a medical journal.
If you have any questions or require more information about the study itself, you may contact the researcher at the numbers mentioned above.
The plan for this study has been reviewed by a Research Ethics Board at the University of Alberta. If you have any questions regarding your rights as a research participant or how the research is being conducted, you may contact the Research Ethics Office at 780-492-2615.
The study coordinator will give you a copy of this form to keep for your records.
You will be asked to confirm your consent electronically when you begin the study on the app.
You may review the privacy and security policy here