Patient & Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE)
Welcome Message from the Coordinator Team
“Welcome to Pakistan’s first ever Patient & Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) group! We hope you join us in our effort to work together with patients, families, and the public to make our health research more relevant and useful here at Ziauddin University”
Messages from our Collaborators
“Being part of a Patient & Public Involvement and Engagement Group is not only personally fulfilling, but it also plays a crucial role in transforming healthcare for the better. Through active participation, we can drive positive change, amplify the voices of those directly impacted, and create a more patient-centered, equitable, and responsive healthcare system.”
Mr. Zahyd Shuja
PPIE Member
“Health research is all about patients, so it makes perfect sense to me that we meaningfully involve patients in all aspects of the clinical trial process. I feel very honoured to get to work with patients as partners and find out from them what diseases we should research and how research should be done.”
Dr. Arishay Hussaini
Co-lead for the PPIE group
About Patient & Public Involvement and Engagement
Patient & Public Involvement and Engagement, or PPIE for short, is all about researchers working together with patients, families, and the public to shape and influence research. This includes deciding what conditions and treatments to study, how research methods could be improved, and what changes should be made as a result of research findings. The main goal of PPIE is to ensure that research is acceptable, relevant, and beneficial to patients and the public.
The PPIE approach is internationally-recognized and increasingly used to improve the quality of research in all areas of health. Our group, based at the Clinical Trials Unit at Ziauddin University, is bringing PPIE to Pakistan to improve the way we conduct clinical trials because we strongly believe in the power of working together with patients.
Our involvement and engagement in clinical trials align with internationally accepted standards, and the core six standards we follow have been adapted from the ‘UK Standards for Public Involvement’ created by the National Institute for Care and Health Research (NIHR) and partner organizations in the United Kingdom.
Professor Dr. Nikhat Ahmed Siddiqui (Coordinator)
Professor Nikhat is a neuroscientist, biochemist, and former Dean of Research at Ziauddin University. Her research career spans over 38 years and crosses the entire research spectrum, from laboratory experiments to clinical studies on diseases such as diabetes, dementia, and blindness. She also meaningfully contributes to research ethics, training, policy development, and strategic planning. Beyond conducting scientific research, Prof. Nikhat is passionate about building capacity to enable high-quality and patient-centered research in Pakistan.
Dr. Arishay Hussaini (Coordinator)
Dr. Arishay is a clinical research associate in the Department of Critical Care Medicine at Ziauddin University. She has actively participated in the implementation and conduct of various research projects, including international randomised controlled trials, qualitative and observational studies. Her interests lie in exploring and improving the experiences of study participants. She aims to work with the local population in Karachi to set research priorities and make research findings relevant to Pakistan.
Dr. Timo Tolppa (Coordinator)
Dr. Timo is a Ph.D. candidate based at the University of British Columbia in Canada and has worked as a regional clinical trial coordinator for several international intensive care trials across South Asia, including Malaysia, Nepal, and Pakistan. He is working collaboratively with researchers at Ziauddin University on making clinical trials more relevant for low-resource settings. Dr. Timo is focused on patient engagement, qualitative research, and health equity, and has a personal interest in the use of film to promote health and justice.
Professor Dr. Madiha Hashmi (Senior Project Lead)
Dr. Hashmi is Professor & Chair of the Department of Critical Care Medicine at the Dr. Ziauddin Group of Hospitals and Ziauddin University. She is a physician researcher with extensive experience in all aspects of critical care research; she has acted as the principal investigator for international trials and set up a national intensive care registry in Pakistan (PRICE) to enable data driven quality improvement projects, observational studies, and clinical trials. Dr. Hashmi is focused on building critical care research capacity in Pakistan, which includes establishing and leading this patient and public involvement and engagement group.
We would love to hear from you!
Join us to learn more about research, help improve healthcare for our patients, and work collaboratively with us to make a difference in how research is conducted at Ziauddin University. Feel free to contact us via phone or email so we can keep you updated on our events, workshops, and opportunities to be involved. We also welcome any suggestions or feedback about our PPIE project.
Email. [email protected]
Phone. +92-3213660201
What is a clinical trial?
Want to learn about clinical trials? Watch this short, animated video in Urdu detailing the purpose of a clinical trial, all the steps involved in a trial journey and the relevance of clinical trials to you, your family and all members of the public. Feel free to send us feedback or questions via email: [email protected]. Conceptualized and created by the team at Azadkhayal and Final Act Animations.
Introduction to our Patient & Public Involvement group.
Watch our Patient & Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) group coordinator, Dr Arishay Hussaini, explain the aim and purpose of the group cased at the Clinical Trials Unit of Ziauddin University.
