Public & Patient Involvement (PPI) Task Force
Mission: Empower the public & patients to understand the potential of in silico medicine, improve healthcare creating ‘user demand’, encourage greater funding and drive broader clinical and regulatory adoption for enhanced impact
We hear a lot about patient centric medical care, but shouldn’t that be preceded by patient centric medical research? The Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) task force of the Policy Development Working group is the first internationally coordinated PPI initiative with focus on in silico medicine and strives to catalyse effective research and innovation translation into positive societal impact through co-developing new technologies together with the patients and the public.
Adopting an evidence-based approach to ensure we best serve the AA members’ needs, we first evaluated the current PPI practices and perceptions through an internal survey, which revealed a relatively low level of awareness, heterogenous perceptions, and an ensuing risk of missing out compared to other medical areas.
Based on these insights, we then prepared a roadmap for PPI implementation driven by the triad of raising PPI awareness, supporting activities, and kindling the requisite culture change for crafting an effective PPI environment, as described in our very first position paper.
A first major achievement in realising this roadmap are the Avicenna Days (AAD) 2023, for which we have secured a diverse Day 3 programme with international PPI pioneers, both from within and outside the AA, who presented case studies and learnings based on how they have created strategic advantage for their organisations through societally engaged research and innovation.
The plain language in silico medicine glossary, published in January 2025,translates complex, technical language into terms understandable by non-experts, aiming to empower patients and the public with a clearer understanding of in silico medicine and its potential impact on healthcare.
Goals
- Define a multi-stakeholder working approach (i.e. Community Advisory Board) for in silico trials’ opportunity with focus on patient engagement (PE).
- Build a PPI Roadmap, identifying stakeholders and establish systematic engagement.
- Create public awareness through sustainable mechanisms, such as, medical websites and social media.
- Build trust in the technology to accelerate adoption of in silico medicine by drawing on case studies (e.g., diabetes).
- Provide guidance to members submitting digital evidence to competent authorities regarding the representation of the public & patients’ interests.
