Patient preferences have become an important field of research. Contrary to the immediate thought, it is not the fact that someone has made a decision that is the focus of interest but instead, we are called to dive deeper on the question: Why did this person decide this way? This becomes particularly important when it comes to drug development and the assessment of innovative treatments. Patient preferences’ information can help identify the outcomes that are most important and assess the relative importance of a treatment’s benefits and risks to patients.

Conscious of the importance of the inclusion of patients’ perspectives, PREFER, a public-private collaborative research project under the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), will establish recommendations to support the development of guidelines for industry, Regulatory Authorities and HTA bodies on how and when to include patient perspectives on benefits and risks of medicinal products, and how patient preference studies can give valuable information to support decision making for regulators and HTA bodies.

In this Workshop, we will discuss and navigate through the value of Patient Preference studies, various frameworks and methods for conducting these studies, and the use of Patient Preferences in regulatory decision making.

*This Workshop has been developed by DIA in collaboration with IMI PREFER, and has been funded by IMI PREFER and IMI PREFER partners.