16 January 2026
By Viktor Simunović & Roger Kennedy
roger@TheCork.ie
New commentary from Sicknote.com’s Viktor Simunović urges “visible consent” as AI enters documentation workflows across healthcare
Artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded in the quietest corner of modern care: clinical notes. Tools that summarise documentation, support coding, draft letters, and flag potential risks are moving into everyday workflows, often in the background, before a patient even knows they exist.
That shift raises a critical question many healthcare organisations have not yet answered clearly in practice: when AI reads patient notes, who owns patient consent and transparency, the hospital/practice or the clinician?
A newly published LinkedIn commentary by Viktor Simunović from telemedicine platform sicknote.com argues the real answer is not one or the other. It is a shared responsibility and the urgent need to make AI use visible, explainable, and governed as part of the routine clinical workflow.
“Patients don’t distinguish between ‘my doctor’ and ‘the hospital system,’” Simunović says. “They just know their story is being read and they expect not to be surprised by how their data is used.”
Why this matters now
Historically, consent and trust have lived inside the clinician–patient relationship: a patient explains symptoms, a clinician documents, and information stays within the bounds of direct care. AI changes that dynamic by enabling new types of processing that can feel unexpected to patients, including:
- surfacing sensitive details beyond the immediate consultation
- linking records across teams or systems
- generating insights that patients did not anticipate
- enabling secondary uses, such as training, research, audit, or billing optimisation
The commentary highlights that the biggest risk is often not purely technical or legal; it is relational: AI gets introduced quietly, patients are not clearly informed, and clinicians are left unable to explain what is happening or why.
The opportunity: “visible consent” as clinical practice
Rather than treating consent as a legal checkbox, Simunović calls for a practical, trust-preserving model: consent and transparency as shared clinical workflow, designed to be understandable at the point of care.
Recommended measures include:
- Plain-language disclosure at the point of care, not buried in policy pages
- Real opt-out or objection routes, simple to understand and record
- Audit trails clinicians can explain when a patient asks, “What happened to my notes?”
- Clear limits on AI use to direct patient benefit, especially for note-processing
- Explicit separation between direct-care use and secondary use, so patients are not surprised by downstream applications
“Consent was built for humans,” Simunović notes. “But healthcare data now feeds machines. If we don’t make AI use visible and explainable in the clinical moment, trust becomes an afterthought.”
About Viktor Simunović / Sicknote.com
Co-founder of Sicknote.com with over 10 years of experience running his own GP clinic. Brings extensive expertise in both B2C and B2B telemedicine through his work with EUDoctor and C-Moon.com, providing digital healthcare solutions across the EU.
Author of several health and longevity books available on Amazon and Foreverolimus.com, combining clinical practice, digital innovation, and medical writing. Dr. Simunović maintains active medical licenses with the Croatian Medical Chamber and specializes in general practice with a focus on preventive medicine and digital health consultations.