Lessons learned from the joint IAHPR-PREFER symposium
Thought leaders and experts discussed ways of facing the growing demand for patient preference information at the “Patient preferences in the medical product life cycle” symposium in Basel this summer. An event organised jointly by PREFER and the International Academy of Health Preference Research (IAHPR). In a recent commentary, panellists report on key messages and lessons learned from this event.
The commentary in Patient highlights key messages from the PREFER-IAHPR symposium on 13 July 2019. Despite the lack of shared understanding of patient preference information and how to utilize them, the symposium unanimously agreed that patient preference information has an important role to play in the medical product life cycle.
In the commentary, the authors conclude that collecting evidence on patient experiences can inform development of preference instruments. They go on to say that collecting patient preferences from the early stages of product development has clear benefits.
According to the authors, gathering patient experience evidence will complement the quantitative evidence and that this could help explain the trade-offs patients make when taking part in patient preference studies. Preference heterogeneity, the variation in preferences between different patients, is also highlighted by the authors as something that is important to recognise. Not only for defining characteristics of patient groups, but for understanding when in the patient’s journey is the best time to capture their preferences.
Whitty, J.A., de Bekker-Grob, E.W., Cook, N.S. et al. Patient Preferences in the Medical Product Lifecycle. Patient (2019) doi:10.1007/s40271-019-00400-y