Patient and public Action, Collaboration, and Trust in Research
PACT Lab is shared infrastructure for patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) in research across NUS Medicine and the National University Health System. It gives research teams a single, structured route to patient and public input into the design, conduct, and governance of medical and population health research.
Established in 2026 with seed funding from NUS Medicine. Recruitment for core staff is underway.
Why involve patients and the public?
Involvement and engagement make research better. People who live with a condition, or who would be asked to join a study, can see what researchers often cannot: what taking part actually costs, whether an outcome measure captures anything that matters to patients, whether the participant materials make sense. Moreover, people have a claim to a say in research that concerns them, since they carry its burdens and it is conducted partly for their benefit. Recognising these points, funders and governing bodies increasingly require patient and public involvement.
What we do
PACT Lab is the shared platform for PPIE across NUS Medicine and NUHS. It connects research teams with patients, caregivers, and members of the public, and helps teams use that involvement to inform research design and to translate primary findings into justifiable policy and translation options. Its services are available to research teams across both institutions. Involvement is reciprocal: the PACT Lab brings patient and public input into research, and works to make research and its findings accessible and useful to the people who take part. The PACT Lab is a lab rather than a support office: alongside its services it develops and tests methods for involvement, evaluates what they achieve, and trains others to use them.
Structured patient and public input into grant applications, study protocols, consent forms, and participant-facing materials, including feedback on study burden, acceptability, and how methods can respond to patient and caregiver experience.
Convening and facilitation of consultation panels, co-design workshops, and partnerships with community organisations, matched to the needs of individual projects and programmes.
Guidelines, standard operating procedures, and training for conducting PPIE responsibly and consistently, together with documentation and evaluation of engagement and its outcomes.
PACT Lab combines practical support with a developing research programme on the methods, governance, and evaluation of patient and public involvement. Four areas of work are planned as the platform matures.
How patients can and should shape the research that affects them, including methodologies and standards for condition-specific consultation and the evaluation of impact.
How patients, publics, and researchers create knowledge together, including co-design methods suited to Singapore's multicultural context and patient research partner models.
The legitimacy and governance of PPIE, including governance frameworks and deliberative methods such as citizens' juries for contested questions in health research.
What members of the public think about health research and how those views can be studied responsibly, including surveys, rapid consultation methods, and approaches to studying perspectives at scale.
HOPS is a demographically representative public panel of over 4,000 members, maintained at CBmE. It allows research teams to obtain structured public input at scale, on questions that do not require experience of a particular condition: study design, participant-facing materials, recruitment approaches, and public attitudes to health research and policy.
CREP, pioneered at CBmE, addresses what to do with public input once it has been gathered: how to weigh considered public judgements against ethical commitments, and reach recommendations that can be justified to the people they affect. It is one of the methods the Lab uses, and it is often applied to input gathered through HOPS.
How we work
Research programmes, clinical teams, and service initiatives connect to the PACT Lab as spokes. They draw on its panels, services, and expertise; embed PPIE work packages within their own grants; and cost the Lab’s support into their budgets. The platform serves the full range of medical and population health research at NUS Medicine and NUHS.
PACT Lab maintains a mapped, current picture of patient, caregiver, and public panels across NUS and NUHS: who convenes them, what they cover, and how they can be accessed. Teams see what already exists before creating something new, and panels are protected from duplicate or excessive requests.
Some panels serve a single programme or condition group; others are available institution-wide. The PACT Lab supports both, and helps teams decide which arrangement suits their work.
PACT Lab's scope covers patients, caregivers, and members of the public, recognising that caregivers are often under-represented in research involvement despite carrying much of the work of care.
Governance
PACT Lab is governed jointly by its three partners. Patients and the public shape the platform itself, in addition to advising the research it supports.
Methodological, ethical, and empirical expertise: the standards and justifications on which credible PPIE depends, alongside hands-on capability including public consultation, survey work, and the Health Opinion Panel Singapore.
System-wide strategy and delivery of patient and caregiver experience, advocacy, and partnership across NUHS institutions, with connection to patient and family partnership structures and to live research and service priorities.
Leadership by patient and public partners, so that the platform's priorities, procedures, and culture are set with the people it exists to involve. Members reach the Network through the Lab's tiered training pathway.
Research teams seeking patient and public input, and patients, caregivers, or members of the public interested in contributing to research, can contact the Lab directly.