PONE-D-22-13809Digital technology and patient and public involvement (PPI) in routine care and clinical research - a pilot study

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chen,

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PLOS ONE

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2. Please amend your current ethics statement to address the following concerns:

a) Did participants provide their written or verbal informed consent to participate in this study?

b) If consent was verbal, please explain i) why written consent was not obtained, ii) how you documented participant consent, and iii) whether the ethics committees/IRB approved this consent procedure."

3. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. 

4. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: 

"ADS is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from THIS Institute, grants from NIHR and the UCL British Heart Foundation Research Accelerator. FWA and YC are supported by UCL Hospitals NIHR Biomedical Research Centre. AH is supported by a Health Education Eng-land Topol Digital Fellowship. The PPI event was kindly supported by funds from the NIHR UCLH BRC PPI bursary fund. The British Heart Foundation Heart Voices network were in-strumental in helping to recruit patients and we are grateful for the assistance of Chloe Gold-man in this regard. We are additionally grateful to Tom Lumbers for help with reviewing slides for the PPI day and contributing to the content and themes for the research element of the day. Lastly, we are grateful to all patients who expressed interest in the day and who kindly volunteered their time and views in helping to support this study and to inform the design of the two projects that have been discussed during this paper."

We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. 

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: N/A

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This study contributes to the literature about hybrid PPI events to understand patients' points of view. However, it would make a more substantial contribution if a more comprehensive analysis of the qualitative findings were presented, not just presenting informants' quotations without further explanation of what they imply.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript by Yang Chen and Colleagues is a well written and sound exploratory report, and may offer some relevant messages for assessing PPI. Patient and public involvement and engagement is gradually becoming part of standard cardiovascular and cancer research and an increasing number of statements are being released regularly to support it.

However, methods description and results presentation still have room for improvement and may be addressed. Please find my suggestions below.

- Little information is currently present regarding the steps that led to the final study cohort selection. It would be useful to know how the final study cohort was selected and derived (especially in light of the pre-event survey that Researchers conducted before the pilot study).

-Do Authors have more information regarding social variables of participants or do they have access to healthcare data?

-From a practical point of view, it would be useful to have more information regarding study timeline, staff training, and study and interview duration.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Digital technology and patient and public involvement (PPI) in routine care and clinical research - a pilot study

PONE-D-22-13809R1

Dear Dr. Chen,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Giuseppe Limongelli

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: N/A

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have well-addressed the reviewers' responses. However, the additional explanation to the quotation would also need to be further mentioned and analyzed in the discussion section. The discussion is still bland. For instance, the statement: "However, there was an emphasis additionally placed on safeguarding required to mitigate against over-measurement and the possible anxiety that elevated readings could create, though this was balanced with points made about elevated readings being positively viewed in terms of being a motivating factor to engage in lifestyle behaviours such as exercise to reduce BP.". How does the sentence support the authors' arguments in the discussion: "When compared to the distribution of current PPI events, [14] it is unclear if participation levels are representative of patients affected by each condition or treatment studied, or if the distribution of known and published PPI events match up to patient priorities more generally. The former in the results indicates a positive tone of the PPI initiative. However, the latter shows otherwise unless the authors provide thorough information to support their argument about the gap.

Reviewer #2: The report has some intrinsic limitations but the Authors have, nonetheless, acknowledged most of them at the end of the manuscript and have re-structured the paper according to recommendations raised during the Reviewing process.

I have no further comments.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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