The Steering Group of EUPATI met in the EPF offices in Brussels on 27 September 2017 and discussed the progress, status and perspectives of the project as we looked back at the first six months since February 2017.
Key highlights of the report include:
- A fully functional management team complete with the recent addition of the Alumni Coordinator (Florian Klett) and a Content Coordinator (Joan Jordan), both EUPATI fellows
- Successful launch of the third expert training course with almost 60 participants from 28 countries
- Train the trainer workshop with 44 participants
- Three new language versions of the Toolbox
- Regional groups of National Platforms established
- Concepts developed for the sustainability and continued growth of EUPATI until and beyond 2019
Even though EUPATI has become a “going concern” in patient education and has been spearheading the patient movement in Europe, its novelty and traction in social media has not ebbed. With thousands of readers, followers and contributors, and with dozens of speaking opportunities at international and local conferences, EUPATI has made a significant impact on how patient involvement in biomedical research and development, and in clinical trials is looked at.
The meeting was complete with an input from the EUPATI Future Group which considers possibilities for the sustainability and self-funding of the entire project beyond 2019. Various business models have been considered and discussed, and the reassuring popularity of the concept of patient education and the dissemination of information has been confirmed, even though this may bring some difficulties locally. The growth and reinforcement of local and regional groupings and patient academies will be one of the key focuses for future work.
