When the BMJ launched its’ “Patient and Public Partnership” in 2014, the Journal explained the rationale of the initiative as follows: “partnering with patients, their carers, community support networks, and the public as an ethical imperative essential to improving the quality, safety, value, and sustainability of health systems”.
We, the members of the FICEBO, couldn’t agree more.
Since the launch of FICEBO, we have been trying to find ways to partner with patients to help us improve our research. Finally, a few weeks ago, we struck gold, as FICEBO research coordinator Pirjo Toivonen found the EUPATI (European Patients’ Academy) and its’ Finnish branch.
We have now had our first collaboration meeting amongst the local EUPATI project coordinator Mirjami Tran Minh, FICEBO investigator Kimmo Lönnrot and Pirjo Toivonen (via Skype).
We are very excited about the new collaboration as we feel strongly that involving patients and/or the public will enormously improve our research in setting the research questions, in determining the most relevant outcome measures, in designing our studies, and in disseminating the results!