All Eyes On You

Engaging patients, healthcare workers and the public with digital tools platforms to help improve the treatment and prevention of eye disease.

The Liverpool Eye Data Platform, led by Dr Philip Burgess, Clinical Senior Lecturer in Eye and Vision Science at the Institute of Life Course and Medical Sciences is a cloud-based data platform that enables researchers to access and analyse eye data to conduct better and more efficient research and develop targeted care through collaboration with patients, the public, and healthcare professionals. One of the recent milestones of the project was a successful and well-attended patient and public engagement event which was conducted in the main foyer of the Royal Liverpool University Hospital...

The purpose of the event was to raise awareness of the Liverpool Eye Data Platform project and the Liverpool Research Eye Biobank to patients, members of the public and NHS staff, to collect feedback from these groups, and recruit people to serve on the Clinical Eye Research Centre PPIE group. Talks from academic staff and a patient representative who is an existing member of a PPIE group were followed by an interactive poster session. Our industry data hosting partner ARO participated.

Over 50 people attended the talks. Members of the public, patients, academic staff from the wider UoL department and clinical staff from Royal Liverpool University Hospital (LUHFT) dropped into the poster session.

The outputs of the activities during the event; a graffiti wall, a post-it board and questionnaires were used for evaluation of the event in raising awareness of the research initiatives amongst patients, public and staff. We will measure extend of participation by recruitment to the PPIE group in the coming months.

TOP TIPS

Secure your venue early: Gaining approval to use the LUHFT venue proved extremely problematic and time consuming. Several departments had to agree for us to hold the event and finding the correct people to speak to held up the rest of the organisation.

Assess venue suitability: On the day, we found the venue acoustics to be subpar and it was difficult to hear some speakers from the back. I recommend using a venue previously used for public engagement and discussing with a previous user.

Have a diverse range of stakeholder representatives: A diverse panel of patient representative attending and being available to answer questions worked really well as the public were able to hear first-hand from a lay person involved in research and discuss any concerns they may have with him. Our industry partner was able to give detailed technical information about certain aspects of the project which clinicians could not.