The last meeting of the Patient Advisory Board as part of the MIA-PROM project took place on 21 January 2025. In a final round of reflection, we analysed the joint work process together and talked in particular about the experiences and influence of the advisory board on the development of the assistance system. It became clear that the continuous involvement of the advisory board members contributed significantly to making the system more user-friendly and making practical adjustments. But we also owe the decision on the robot, its appearance, and the alignment of some PROM items (questions from the health questionnaire) to the collaboration with the advisory board! It was criticised that the representativeness of the advisory board would have benefited from a more diverse group of people. We were very pleased with the feedback that all the people involved felt seen in the process and included on an eye level.
Another part of the meeting was the testing of the final system. The members of the advisory board had the opportunity to thoroughly test all functions once again and give their final assessments. The feedback gathered confirmed that many of the suggestions and decisions made during the project had been successfully implemented. The advisory board thus made an important contribution to improving the system. At the same time, we noted which aspects could not be implemented technically and where we were not quite able to fulfill our promises.
The results and findings from this last meeting will feed directly into the contribution for the upcoming Berlin Workshop for Participation 2025, at which the MIA-PROM team will be present with a poster. All members of the advisory board – except one person – are involved in this contribution as co-authors. We are particularly pleased that our advisory board member Beate Detlefs will be actively involved in the conference, which means that the perspective of patients will also be represented in this more academic context.
At the end of the meeting, we had dinner together, where we were able to review the past two years in a relaxed atmosphere. We want to thank all members of the advisory board for their commitment and valuable contributions – without you, the project would not have been possible in this form!