Digital Technologies for Community Consultation and Public Disclosure in Exception From Informed Consent Trials

Community Consultation and Public Disclosure (CC/PD) are essential ethical requirements for clinical trials conducted under Exception from Informed Consent (EFIC). Traditional CC/PD approaches, such as advertisements, manual surveys, and inperson meetings, are often resource-intensive and limited in scale, geographic reach, and community representativeness. Digital technologies, such as social media campaigns, digital survey panels, and virtual video conferencing, offer new modalities to disseminate information, solicit feedback, and facilitate bidirectional dialogue with community populations. Digital CC/PD strategies can expand measurable reach, shorten implementation timelines, and provide quantifiable indices of engagement while maintaining acceptability among Institutional Review Boards. When deployed alongside local engagement activities, digital technologies offer additional tools that may strengthen the practical conduct of CC/PD. This review summarizes contemporary digital approaches to CC/PD and highlights their impact on modern emergency care research.