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PPI: THE ADVANTAGES OF Involving Patients in Clinical Research
One of the most crucial factors for success in clinical research is the patient. In work package 6i of COMBACTE-MAGNET the patient was the focus. A Bristol-based team delivered a Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Toolkit.
Andy Gibson, Associate Professor in public involvement in research, based at the University of West England: “The importance and prevalence of PPI has grown over the years, particularly in the UK, but drug development and anti-microbial research is still an area where PPI is rare.”
Advantages
“PPI can help ensure that the research questions address the needs of the patients. It can help in designing interventions by maximising their benefits to patients while minimising any disadvantages. This can be true of any intervention from a drug to a new therapy to a different way of running a service. PPI can also help ensure that any outcome measure chosen has real-world relevance. All this can contribute to more patient-centric clinical trial designs which in turn can lead to better recruitment and retention and a greater chance that the work will have an impact on real-world healthcare and patients.”
PPI Toolkit
“The PPI Toolkit is a useful resource for developing PPI in all stages of the medicine development life cycle. I think more people are becoming aware of PPI and are interested in trying it out but are unsure how to start. We hope the toolkit will help with that. On a larger scale I think it’s important that research funders start requiring proof of PPI in bid development as a pre-condition for funding. I also think relevant patients and members of the public should be members of funding panels to review PPI plans and assess the potential patient benefit of new research.”
The Toolkit consists of:
- A Practical Guide: this document sets out the practical steps of doing PPI.
- The main Toolkit: this document describes the content of the Practical Guide in more detail, providing case examples and evidence to support the practical steps recommended.
To download the PPI Toolkit, visit the COMBACTE Publication Library.
Academic papers
“We wrote several academic papers exploring different aspects of public involvement, including the experiences of principal investigators doing PPI, differing practices in public involvement across Europe and our own experiences of setting up the public advisory group for COMBACTE-MAGNET. We hope these papers together with the Toolkit will provide resources which will support researchers to embark on public involvement.”
Aina Gomila Grange
• Former clinical researcher for COMBACTE projects
• Infectious Diseases consultant and antibiotic stewardship referrer Parc Tauli Hospital Universitari, Barcelona
“COMBACTE was for me the first contact with multi-centre studies at the European level. My experience there allowed me to appreciate the methodology behind COMBACTE and I made invaluable contacts among well-known researchers from all over the world. It was a very enriching experience where I was able to hone my research skills, which has undoubtedly helped me afterwards. It also helped me to more deeply specialise in healthcare-associated infections.”
Seamus O'Brien
• Former EFPIA Coordinator COMBACTE-CARE
• R&D Director for GARDP
“My role in leading the development of the COMBACTE projects with industry partners and the public consortium demonstrated the potential to both come together to address shared goals related to the development of antibiotics for patients and to ensure substantial outcomes for European research capability. The experience I gained from COMBACTE is now core to how I approach partnerships to address development and access of antibiotic treatments as R&D Director for GARDP.”