The changing role of patient advocates in research
’Welcome to the revolution! The changing role of patient advocates within research’ is the title of an article about the long way patient advocacy has come.
The article, written by Anna Wagstaff for Cancer World, talks about the slow, but increasing realisation of just how important the patient voice is in healthcare.
There is a lot of evidence that research carried out is often not about issues patients feel are important to their treatment. Patient advocates feel that it is essential to have their input into the research process as early on as possible, so that the right questions are investigated in the right way.
The article talks about how both patients and researchers who have had a positive experience of patient involvement in the research process agree that there is no going back.
The article also details the variations of how involved patients can be from early on in the research process in the different European countries and shows how European Patients' Academy on Therapeutic Innovation (EUPATI) is playing a major role in training expert patients from all over Europe.