It would be great if they obtained patient consent to analyze their medical records. In case you don’t know, in every state, if you get cancer, your medical records are taken without your consent and submitted to state and federal cancer registries, and identifiable medical records can be shared with researchers without your consent.
The patients know this. Asking for consent would still yield the vast majority of the data.
It would also mean more people analyzing it - I know at least one big pharma company that won't touch patient data that was taken without consent because they don't want to be associated with such unethical practices.
