ICON’s Michael Pellegrino outlines research looking at patient involvement in journal review processes

A colleague and I independently co-developed a research interest that sought to evaluate patients’ involvement in a particular aspect of medical publications. At that time, there were widespread calls for increased patient involvement across the spectrum of medical communications, drug development and regulatory settings; discussions of ‘patient-centric approaches’ were commonplace – and that’s not to say unwarranted.

Initiatives such as the FDA’s Patient-Focused Drug Development (PFDD) series were underway and pharma companies were beginning to issue patient engagement statements and protocols. In the field of medical publications, the British Medical Journal had put out a call for medical journal editors to actively engage patients in their journal review processes. This was a novel if not daring proposition. We wanted to explore if and how these calls for increased patient involvement had penetrated the field, specifically, journal review processes. We reported at the 2019 meeting of the International Society of Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) that most editors across diverse therapy areas did not include patients in peer-reviewed journals’ review processes.

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