UNIFIED Publishes Its First Editorial on Patient-Centred Healthcare Decision-Making

The UNIFIED Consortium has published its first editorial in The Patient – Patient-Centered Outcomes Research: “Putting Patient Voices at the Heart of Healthcare Decisions: The UNIFIED Public-Private Project”.

The article introduces the vision behind UNIFIED and highlights the importance of integrating patient perspectives more effectively into healthcare decision-making throughout the medical product lifecycle. The editorial was authored by Esther de Bekker-Grob, Jorien Veldwijk, Bianca Pop, Josh Coulter, Brett Hauber, and members of the UNIFIED Consortium.

Read the publication here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40271-026-00809-2

Advancing patient-centred healthcare

Although patient-centred healthcare is increasingly recognised as essential, healthcare innovation, clinical studies, and decision-making processes often fail to fully capture what matters most to patients.

This can contribute to:

• Treatments that are less effective in real-world settings

• Lower treatment adherence

• Reduced quality of life

• Healthcare innovations that do not adequately reflect patient needs and preferences

The editorial outlines how UNIFIED aims to address these challenges through collaboration between academia, industry, patient organisations, regulators, HTA bodies, clinicians, and technology partners.

The UNIFIED approach

UNIFIED is developing a harmonised framework that integrates:

• Patient Preference Information (PPI)

• Clinical Outcome Assessments (COAs)

• Digital Health Technology-derived Measures (DHTMs)

By combining these complementary sources of patient-centred data, the project seeks to support more comprehensive and meaningful healthcare decision-making. The aim is to ensure that treatment benefits are evaluated not only through traditional clinical outcomes, but also through patients’ perspectives and lived experiences.

The UNIFIED Framework will be tested and validated across five medical domains:

• Paediatric Radiation Oncology

• Lung Cancer

• Parkinson’s Disease

• Obesity

• Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

An important milestone for the project

This publication marks an early milestone for the UNIFIED Consortium as the project moves into its implementation phase. It reflects the Consortium’s shared commitment to strengthening the role of patient voices in research, clinical practice, regulation, HTA, and reimbursement decision-making.

UNIFIED is funded by the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (IHI JU) under Horizon Europe and brings together an international Consortium of public and private partners working collaboratively to improve healthcare outcomes and support the long-term sustainability of healthcare systems.