Clinician perspectives on patient consent for metagenomic next-generation sequencing of blood samples for the diagnosis of infection in clinical practice

Most of the UK infection clinicians surveyed did not think that mNGS of blood from returning travellers required discussion before being performed when patients had already consented for infection diagnostics to find the cause of their illness. However, clinicians felt that patients should be aware of the potential for additional testing and wanted information on mNGS to be readily available.With the increasing availability of clinical infectious disease mNGS, engagement of non-specialist clinicians and patients is required to confirm the generalizability of these perspectives. The model of consent used for clinical infectious disease mNGS should be ethically adequate in addition to being acceptable to patients and clinicians.