JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Patient-centered medical product research & development (R&D) enables researchers and medical product developers to more effectively and efficiently discover and develop new therapeutic interventions that meet the needs of patients. While there is growing momentum to incorporate evidence-based patient input into decision-making processes throughout the medical product R&D life cycle, there remain a host of barriers to full implementation and integration of systematic approaches for collecting and using robust and meaningful patient input data, including lack of tools, methodologies, and parameters for soliciting and incorporating different types of patient input. This article lays out three overarching research priorities that, if effectively addressed, would help advance the science of patient input: 1) understanding the patient experience over the course of a given disease or medical condition, 2) capturing the patient perspectives and priorities on benefit-risk, and 3) incorporating patient input into clinical trial design and continuous improvement. Approaches to address each of these research priorities can better enable the incorporation of patient input throughout the medical R&D life cycle to inform decision-making on the part of researchers, medical product developers, regulators, clinicians, and patients.