Bridging consent: from toll bridges to lift bridges?

Ethical and legal frameworks governing consent dissuade cross-domain data sharing. Paradoxically, analysis of consent models for disease-specific and population-based research reveals such a high degree of similarity that bridging consent could be possible if additional information regarding bridging was incorporated into consent forms. We submit that bridging of consent could be supported if current trends endorsing a new interpretation of consent are adopted. To illustrate this we sketch potential bridging consent scenarios.A bridging consent, respectful of the spirit of initial consent, is feasible and would require only small changes to the content of consents currently being used. Under a bridging consent approach, the initial data and samples collection can serve an identified research project as well as contribute to the creation of a resource for a range of other projects.Millions of human biological samples and associated health data are stored in research biobanks and constitute essential resources for biomedical researchers interested in accessing large and valuable datasets needed to study complex disease aetiology, improve diagnostics, and advance the agenda of personalized medicine. The ability to share and combine data from disease-specific and population-based research has become increasingly important for translational medicine. For instance, research designs that recruit by genotype rather than by illness outcome [1] are becoming more common and will also be a fruitful approach for studying pathways to disease where variation along the continuum from pre-disease status to clinical manifestation is analyzed. Such study designs will entail extensive cross-domain data sharing between disease-specific and population-based research. However, cross-domain data sharing between these different research environments remains limited, partly because such sharing is not anticipated in most traditional consent forms. This is particularly true in disease-specifi