Dan presents at PPI event 08/03/2011

Dan presented at an event organised by the Yorkshire and Humber Research Design Service, The South Yorkshire Comprehensive Local Research Network and the South Yorkshire CLAHRC.

The event was called PPI (Patient and Public Involvement) ‘Nothing About us Without us’.  Patient and Public involvement is how the health research world describes the process which makes sure that patients are consulted and involved at all levels of research – from coming up with the ideas for projects through to doing the research themselves.

This is quite a strange idea for designers  to understand as they have always considered that the person who will use their product or service is central to their work.

The day was made up of a series of presentations from different research teams, with two presentations from SY-CLAHRC.  Dr Rebecca Palmer introduced the patient research group who help to form and guide her research around people who have problems with speech following a stroke.  Several patients and carers were present and spoke about the benefits they gained from being involved.  More information on this project an be found here : http://clahrc-sy.nihr.ac.uk/theme-stroke-cactus.html

Dan presented the outpatient project  and explained how patients were involved from start to finish in the process. In this case it was the patients who were the experts, and their knowledge was key to developing ways of making the outpatient service better.

The event was attended by both healthcare professionals and patients.