What is involved for the lay panel or committee member?
In addition to the reviewer role, we recruit two or three members of the public to each commissioning group (a sub panel for Programme Grants or committee for Research for Patient Benefit or i4i). At CCF:
These members join the clinical and academic experts from various medical disciplines, research institutes and public health bodies whose role is to assess designated research applications for excellence in the quality of the work to be funded and clinical relevance to the NHS.
Lay members look at a designated number of research proposals before attending their panel or committee meeting so that they can help bring a public and/or patient perspective to the discussions and commissioning decisions.
Before each meeting, a document set is provided which contains all the applications to be considered. All panel and committee members – including the lay members – are expected to read lay summaries of the applications which outline the proposed research. During the meeting each application will be discussed and members are expected to give their opinion of the applications based on their expertise and the advice of independent experts (i.e. the peer and lay reviewers).