Stakeholder communities

To ensure that the patient voice is adequately heard, the consortium will set up a Stakeholder Involvement Community (STIC). The STIC will ensure patient and clinician engagement throughout the whole project. The STIC will consist of two communities: 1) Patient-clinician partnerships locally embedded at each of the trial sites, and 2) Patient and patient relative representatives from national patient organisations and/or support groups.  

The STIC will assist patients and their relatives in building close relationships with clinical researchers involved in ILLUMINATE and will help develop a strong connection between the project and the patients, their relatives, or representatives.  

Role in ILLUMINATE 

To make sure that the patient is central in ILLUMINATE's work, the consortium will engage patients in many of the project's aspects. The network that ILLUMINATE will establish via the STIC will create awareness among patients of the available novel technologies and their significance to their condition. ILLUMINATE's STIC will advise on project developments including the interpretation of findings for the lives of patients, and how the findings can be implemented in the long-term and in the best way to benefit patients.  

The interaction between the STIC members and the ILLUMINATE researchers will be facilitated via an interactive forum. The forum will act as a ‘Learning Lab’ in which the STIC members can share their knowledge and experience, provide their insights regarding the data, and advise and discuss relevant issues with ILLUMINATE researchers.  

As part of the STIC, ILLUMINATE will collect the experiences of healthcare providers with metabolic-MRI in three clinical centres. These experiences could help to further advance and optimise the technology and improve trainings on using it.