Patient and public involvement and engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic: developments, learnings and creating a better system

This digital FORUM workshop, held in partnership with the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, the Association of Medical Research Charities and the National Institute for Health Research, explored what we can learn from the COVID-19 pandemic on system-wide implementation of patient and public involvement in life science research.

Crises such as the ongoing coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic provide new challenges public involvement and engagement in life sciences research. COVID-19 has affected the entire UK population in some form, not just those infected but those with other ongoing health conditions, and the wider public. As the UK and other countries around the world look to suppress the outbreak this was an opportunity to discuss the roles that patients, carers and the public have been playing and what this tells us about the current state of patient-centredness in biomedical and health research.

This workshop also provided the opportunity to think more broadly about public involvement and engagement and its development across our health research system. While public involvement has undoubtedly become a more prominent feature of biomedical and health research in recent years, particularly in the UK, there is still much to do and many challenges to overcome to embed and scale the role of patient, carer and public partners in future research.

The findings of this workshop will be presented at the next Pioneering Partnerships conference for discussion and further implementation.

This workshop took place online on 19 May 2020 and was invitation only. To discuss this event further please contact forum@acmedsci.ac.uk.