Patient Voices: Deciding Our Futures
Protecting and promoting the role of patients in shaping the future of retinal health.
Patient Voices: Deciding Our Futures is Retina International’s initiative focused on ensuring that people affected by retinal conditions remain at the centre of decisions about research, healthcare, innovation, and access to treatments.
The future of retinal health should be shaped with patients, not just for patients.
As science and healthcare continue to advance, it is essential that the perspectives of those most affected are included throughout the process. Patients bring unique knowledge and experience that can help shape research priorities, improve healthcare pathways, and ensure that new developments address real-world needs.
Through this initiative, Retina International works to highlight the importance of meaningful patient involvement and to strengthen collaboration between patients, researchers, clinicians, policymakers, and industry partners.
Ensuring patients have a meaningful role in decisions that affect their lives.
Patient involvement is increasingly recognised as essential to developing healthcare and research solutions that truly meet community needs. However, meaningful patient participation requires more than consultation — it requires active partnership and recognition of patients as experts through lived experience.
When patients are included, innovation is stronger, more relevant, and more equitable. The lived experiences of individuals affected by retinal diseases provide critical insights that shape more effective policies, improve research outcomes, and drive meaningful change.
“The patient voice has proven its value again and again. When patients contribute to decisions, research becomes more focused on real needs, and innovation delivers tangible benefits to the people it’s meant to serve.”
– Avril Daly, CEO of Retina International
