Services
PACT is a new lab with a small staff. What it can support therefore grows in stages, as posts are filled, panels are built, and access agreements are put in place. This page sets out what is realistic at each stage so that research teams can plan around it.
Available to research teams at NUS Medicine and NUHS now, within the capacity of the Lab's two directors while recruitment is underway.
Advice
Discussion of what involvement a study needs, at what stage, and how to write and cost it into a grant application before submission.
Get in touch →
Mapping
Directing teams to patient, caregiver, and public panels that already exist across the two institutions, so that groups are not created unnecessarily.
Current map →
Public input
A small number of public attitude studies each year through the Health Opinion Panel Singapore, subject to staff capacity and to the number of studies panel members take part in each year.
More about HOPS →
Contingent on core posts being filled in late 2026 or early 2027.
Mapping
Who convenes which panels, what they cover, who decides on access, and what capacity each has.
For the map in progress, see here →
Review
Comment on consent forms, information sheets, and recruitment materials, once core staff are in post, and including members of the public as a dedicated review panel is assembled.
Guidance
Written guidance on conducting involvement responsibly and consistently, including reimbursement, recruitment, and documentation.
Public input
A subset of HOPS members trained to appraise research from a public perspective, for projects that need considered public judgement rather than survey responses.
Consultation
Convening and facilitation of consultation and co-design sessions for a limited number of projects each year, prioritised by fit and readiness.
Contingent on further hires and on access agreements being in place.
Training
Training and certification so that research teams can conduct their own involvement to an agreed standard, funded from their own grants. This is what allows the Lab's support to reach more teams than it could serve directly.
In development
Training
Tiered training for patients, caregivers, and members of the public: self-advocacy and navigating the health system, then representing others with the same condition, then formal advocacy roles.
In development
Access
Published routes to patient groups held by clinical teams and partner organisations, with agreed criteria, capacity, and points of contact.
In development
Governance
Terms of reference for the Steering Committee and the Leadership Network, the joint agreement between the two institutions, and decision rights over access, priorities, and spending.
In development
Projects
Two or three studies supported end to end and written up, so that research teams and funders can see what involvement changed in practice rather than in principle.
In development
Evaluation
Documentation and evaluation of what involvement changed in the studies that used it, reported at the end of the second year and feeding the Lab's research programme.
In development
By the end of the second year the PACT Lab should no longer be the only route to involvement across NUS Medicine and NUHS. As our training operations scale, involvement becomes something research teams do as a matter of course, to a standard they were taught, with panels and partners they know how to reach. The Lab's role then shifts from directly facilitating PPIE to setting standards, holding the agreements that make access possible, training each new cohort, and building the evidence on what involvement achieves.
From the third year the Lab expects to draw on a wider range of sources: national research grants, philanthropic funding, industry partnerships, service contracts, and income from training and certification. Establishment funding is what makes those sources reachable, by producing the standards, the trained network, and the evidence they each require.
The wider ambition is a research culture in which patients, caregivers, and members of the public are not consulted at the end but present from the start, and in which the question of what research is worth doing is answered partly by the people it is done for. That takes longer than two years and a sustained shift in research culture, which the training, the standards, and the evidence base are there to support.
Approach the Lab as early as possible. Involvement shapes a study most usefully before the design is fixed, and it can only be costed into a grant application if it is planned before submission. Charges apply to some services; the schedule will be published here once it is set.