Public patient involvement (PPI) is an increasingly important aspect of research. The advent of formal PPI in research is positively influencing research towards the needs of the patients. PPI ensures that patients and their families have the opportunity to express the questions and needs that matter most to them, which in turn improves the relevance of research. PPI also plays an important role in ensuring that patients are informed about research that is relevant to them. Done well, PPI has been shown to result in increased patient support for research and the improved likelihood of patient involvement in the case of clinical research.
The UCD Centre for Arthritis Research (UCD CAR) has recently started a PPI initiative called The Patient Voice in Arthritis Research and are currently revising the Centre’s strategy to incorporate their patient insight partners and PPI initiative as a central tenet. As PPI is being incorporated as part of their standard research practice, UCD CAR want to be able to measure, refine and improve its use, as they do with all other aspects of the research cycle. Currently, there are no standard PPI assessment guidelines that can effectively be applied to PPI schemes in an Irish academic research context.
