Extract data from informed consent forms

An informed consent form is the record that a patient agreed to a procedure after the risks were explained, and it is the document a clinical-operations team checks before a case can proceed. A pre-procedure nurse, a medical-records auditor, and a compliance reviewer all read it for completeness rather than diagnosis: which procedure was consented to, whether the risks, benefits, and alternatives were documented, and whether every required signature is present and dated. Modeled in HL7 FHIR as a consent record tied to an encounter and a procedure, the form names the patient, the procedure and its clinical indication, the provider performing it, the facility, and the authorizations, the patient signature, a witness where required, and the provider attestation. A consent signed 2026-05-29 for a procedure on 2026-05-30 is only in order if the signatures and dates hold together, and in a US hospital the Medicare Conditions of Participation expect a properly executed consent form in the record before surgery. Narrative risk disclosure sits next to a set of yes-or-no attestations, and the two have to be read differently. Risks, benefits, and alternatives are narrative or itemized lists that have to be captured as written, but the fields a consent audit turns on are boolean: whether the patient signed, whether a witness signed, whether capacity to consent was assessed, whether an interpreter was used, and whether comprehension was confirmed. What an audit looks for is exactly a missing witness signature or an unchecked capacity assessment, and that defect has to surface at the point of care rather than after the procedure. Its revocation clause, stating the patient's right to withdraw consent, is its own field. Talonic reads the informed consent form and returns the patient and encounter identifiers, the procedure and its indication, the risk, benefit, and alternative disclosures, and the signature and attestation fields as structured data, with each signature captured as present or absent with its date. Signed and witnessed on 2026-05-29 with capacity assessed and an interpreter used, a consent for a named procedure at Riverside Regional Hospital loads into the records module of the EMR with its attestation fields flagged, so a reviewer confirms completeness from fields rather than rereading the form. None of that is judgment: what the form states is structured, and whether the consent is legally valid or clinically adequate is not decided here.

What gets extracted from informed consent forms

How extraction works for informed consent forms

Informed consent forms reach a records or clinical-operations team as an EHR-generated PDF, a scanned wet-ink form run through OCR, and a faxed pre-procedure packet, so the layout ranges from a structured template out of Epic Systems to a signed paper scan. Talonic classifies the form and maps it to the consent schema in the Field Registry, which separates the patient and encounter identifiers and the procedure from the risk, benefit, and alternative disclosures and the signature block. Procedure and clinical indication are captured first, the risks, benefits, and alternatives return as itemized rows with a severity or likelihood where the form states one, and each signature, patient, witness, and provider, returns as present or absent with its date. Attestation booleans a consent audit checks, capacity assessed, interpreter used, and comprehension confirmed, are read as true or false, and the revocation clause is captured as its own field. Field-level confidence and pixel-region provenance follow DIN SPEC 91491, so a reviewer can verify a signature or a capacity attestation against the source form. Judging whether the consent is legally valid or clinically adequate stays with the care team and counsel; the extraction only structures what the form states.

Sample extraction

A pre-procedure informed consent form, patient-signed and witnessed

{
  "document_number": "IC-2026-558102",
  "document_date": "2026-05-29",
  "patient.name": "Helen Park",
  "patient_identifier": "4471982",
  "birth_date": "1968-02-14",
  "procedure.description": "Right knee arthroscopy with partial meniscectomy",
  "procedure.indication": "Medial meniscal tear with persistent pain",
  "provider.name": "Dr. Alan Reyes",
  "provider.title": "Orthopedic Surgery",
  "facility_name": "Riverside Regional Hospital",
  "authorization.patient_signature": true,
  "authorization.signature_date": "2026-05-29",
  "authorization.witness_signature": true,
  "authorization.witness_name": "R. Vogel, RN",
  "authorization.provider_signature": true,
  "status": "active",
  "capacity_assessed": true,
  "interpreter_used": true,
  "comprehension_confirmed": true,
  "procedure_risks": [
    {
      "risk_id": "1",
      "risk_description": "Infection",
      "risk_severity": "low",
      "frequency": "uncommon"
    },
    {
      "risk_id": "2",
      "risk_description": "Bleeding",
      "risk_severity": "low",
      "frequency": "uncommon"
    }
  ],
  "alternative_procedures": [
    {
      "alternative_id": "1",
      "alternative_name": "Physical therapy",
      "alternative_description": "Non-operative management",
      "pros_and_cons": "Avoids surgery; slower and less certain relief"
    }
  ]
}

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