Empowering cancer patients: the LIH commits to collaborative research
The LIH is increasingly involving patients in its research projects. On Friday 3 March, LIH representatives from Patient & Public Involvement, the National Cancer Registry, and the National Cancer Collection organised a training session with 12 cancer patients to introduce them to the world of research and how they can participate in projects at the National Centre for Translational Cancer Research (NCTCR).
The session aimed to explain the research process to patients and to explore how patients can collaborate with researchers to create projects together.
Overall, the training session was very successful, with the patients showing a lot of interest, participation and motivation, especially in the questions they asked about the research process. The presenters outlined concrete examples of collaborations between patients and researchers. These included identifying the most important research topics for patients using surveys and focus groups, reviewing patient-addressed materials to ensure they are easy to read, making research results accessible to the public, among many others.
The patient training sessions are part of the NCTCR, which is an initiative of the Plan National Cancer 2 (PNC2) in Luxembourg. A key focus of the project is to involve patients in the research process so that they can work closely with researchers to co-create research projects. This training session is an important step in further encouraging patient involvement at the LIH and shows the institute’s commitment to involving patients in research projects.
However, to ensure that the patient-researcher collaboration is successful, it is important not only to educate patients, but also to train researchers that would like to involve patients in their research. In this vein, we will offer a training course shortly for all interested researchers.
