AI Framework for Patient Engagement in Healthcare Research

Panelyze is an AI-powered co-production system designed to augment Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement in healthcare research. The framework uses a five-step workflow, including generating synthetic personas from census data and producing algorithmic evaluation scores for research proposals. Author Andrew Steele published this methodology on figshare in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Generating synthetic patient personas and panel discussions based on census data and lived experiences to simulate diverse input.
• Semantically analyzing research proposal text to identify critical socio-economic barriers like wage loss from clinic visits.
• Producing Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement artefacts such as Plain English Summaries and Infographics from proposal content.
• Calculating the Panelyze Score, an algorithmic metric, to evaluate healthcare proposals against UK Standards for Public Involvement.
• Validating terminology choices in research materials, such as drug naming conventions, through simulated qualitative dialogue.

Strengths

• Framework validated using a specific cardiovascular research proposal (CAPRIE-2), demonstrating practical application.
• Systematic five-step workflow defined, from persona generation to artefact creation.
• Published under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license, allowing for reuse and adaptation.

Limitations

• Dataset is a 1.7 MB PDF describing a methodology, containing no primary tabular or structured patient data for direct analysis.
• Validation is based on a single case study (CAPRIE-2), limiting evidence of generalizability across different research domains.
• Synthetic personas are generated from census data, which may not capture the full nuance of individual lived experiences.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Andrew Steele.

Collection Method

Describes a developed AI system (Panelyze) and its validation on a specific research proposal.

Freshness

Last updated April 2026.

Geography

Methodology and validation case are UK-focused, referencing UK Standards for Public Involvement.