About : Patients Participate!

Patients Participate! was a JISC-funded 7 month project (running in 2011-2012) to investigate the potential of crowd-sourced “lay summaries”, derived from UK PubMed Central content, to enable patients to better understand research. Having free access to the scientific literature enables patients to participate in the research process but, in practice, they tend to be overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of the literature. Whilst many medical research charities provide lay summaries, evidence suggests that academics struggle to describe their work in a way that is accessible to all. The feasibility study gathered stakeholder requirements, ran a community consultation Workshop, assessed usability of existing citizen science platforms and developed Citizen-Patient Use Cases. The project also produced Advocacy Guidance for academics (via DCC) and for citizens (via BL and AMRC), to facilitate engagement in open and participative (P4) medicine and health science. You can stay up to date with the project by reading the project blog. To subscribe to the blog in an RSS reader please use: http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/patientsparticipate/feed/ Further information about the project deliverables and other activities is available from the links in the top menu. More about the involvement of the project partners: UKOLN, the British Library and the Association of Medical Research Charities.