This month, Rare Patient Voice LLC, a firm connecting patients and family caregivers to opportunities for sharing their voices, celebrates ten years since it was launched by research industry executive Wes Michael in 2013.
Patients and their loved ones are frontline experts on the diseases and conditions impacting their lives. Their experiences and insights can be invaluable as new treatments, devices, and services are created and as existing approaches are fine-tuned. Companies are increasingly eager to include the patient and family caregiver perspective in their research, development, and marketing processes. For the past decade, Rare Patient Voice has empowered patients and family caregivers to have their voices heard through participating in research studies, for which they are compensated.
“It’s been an amazing ten years. What started as a ‘good idea’ blossomed into reality, with clients embracing our ability to connect them with the quality respondents they needed for impactful studies, and patients and family caregivers eager to be heard by decision-makers,” said Wes Michael, Founder and President of Rare Patient Voice. “Early on, I would worry that I’d need to defend the how’s and why’s of RPV’s mission and what we were doing, but people tend to get it immediately and want to be part of it. And the fact that the company has grown so significantly in terms of our panel, staff, and clientele is proof positive that the patient voice has a major role to play in the road to improving the lives of all patients.”
Rare Patient Voice is a leader in working with clients who require rare or non-rare disease respondents who meet very specific criteria for participation in research studies. Since its founding ten years ago, the company has paid patients and family caregivers over $10 million for taking part in research. In celebration of its 10th anniversary and as a thank you to patients and family caregivers, RPV has announced that effective immediately, it is raising the honoraria paid to respondents taking part in research studies to $120 per hour.