Patient and Public Involvement in Clinical Trials: What's been happening and what can we learn from it?

I attended an event on Friday hosted by the MRC North West Trials Hub (http://www.liv.ac.uk/translational-medicine/departmentsandgroups/nwhtmr/...)
entitled "Patient and Public Involvement in Clinical Trials: What's been happening and what can we learn from it?". The day aimed to bring together PPI contributors from clinical trials, Clinical Trials Units, Chief Investigators and funders and shared some preliminary data from the NIHR HS&DR funded EPIC study and some other PPI initiatives.

Mentioned at the day were three other PPI related programmes of work whose websites should be visited for further information:
- EUPATI (http://www.patientsacademy.eu)
The consortium project "European Patients‘ Academy on Therapeutic Innovation" (EUPATI), is funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative, aims to provide scientifically reliable, objective, comprehensive information to patients on medicines research and development. It will increase the capacities and capabilities of well-informed patients and patient organisations to be effective advocates and advisors in medicines research, e.g. in clinical trials, with regulatory authorities and in ethics committees.

- Public Involvement Impact Assessment Framework (PiiAF) (http://piiaf.org.uk/)
PiiAF has been produced to help researchers assess the impacts of involving members of the public in their research in diverse fields from health care to local history. PiiAF is aimed at researchers but members of the public interested in getting involved in research may also find it useful and some people have used it in training for researchers and the public.

-GRIPP2
Which follows on from the GRIPP (Guidance for Reporting Involvement of Patients and Public) work previously reported (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22004782)