Plain English summaryThis commentary talks about patient involvement in one of the biggest EU projects to date—U-BIOPRED. It describes how people and carers of people with asthma have been able to develop and drive their input and have their voice heard among the >200 healthcare professional project members.Five key principles for the success of the patient involvement group are presented: involve early, involve deeply, have patients feedback on project progress, include patients in dissemination and help patients convey their own story.This group has been used as an example for other EU-funded projects, and the patient involvement group will be maintained after the end of the project to ensure that their experience and knowledge can help develop best practice in the future.
The UK Refractory Asthma Stratification Programme (RASP-UK) will explore novel biomarker stratification strategies in severe asthma to improve clinical management and accelerate development of new therapies. Prior asthma mechanistic studies have not stratified on inflammatory phenotype and the understanding of pathophysiological mechanisms in asthma without Type 2 cytokine inflammation is limited. RASP-UK will objectively assess adherence to corticosteroids (CS) and examine a novel composite biomarker strategy to optimise CS dose; this will also address what proportion of patients with severe asthma have persistent symptoms without eosinophilic airways inflammation after progressive CS withdrawal. There will be interactive partnership with the pharmaceutical industry to facilitate access to stratified populations for novel therapeutic studies.
Comments included 'Open and honest colleagues. Happy to call friends now' 'Brilliant group! Supportive, non-judgemental, definitely exceeded expectations. Without this group I would definitely have done much worse. Reduced my workload and made me practice. Great group-thank you!' 'A very supportive group who share their knowledge willingly and able to give honest constructive feedback. Will be extremely useful to have this support even after finishing START' 'Brilliant support, lovely to meet others at the same grade. Would have loved groups like this for other assessments/difficult times of my career. Maybe throughout my career! Thank you so much! ' Conclusion This is a unique multi-deanery collaboration between senior Paediatric trainees in the UK who continue to support each other. Acknowledgements 1. All trainees who filled in the survey to support this write up. Declarations No conflict of interest.
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