VOICE at Imperial

When you involve patients or members of the public through VOICE, you may need to collect, store and use personal data about them, such as their name, date of birth, email or home address and bank account details (in order to pay them for their involvement). Any information about an individual from which that person can be identified is defined as “Personal Data”. There may also be instances where you collect, store and use more sensitive types of personal data, such as information about their health, medical condition or sexual orientation. Data such as this must be handled in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and Imperial's data protection policy.

You must therefore be confident that you understand your data handling responsibilities when using the VOICE online platform and are equipped to carry them out appropriately. Please read our ‘Imperial Privacy Notice for Public Involvement and Engagement’, which outlines to the public how we handle their data. If you wish to discuss this further, please contact us at voice@imperial.ac.uk. 

In many cases, contact with VOICE members can be managed via the VOICE platform.

Where your opportunity requires you to communicate directly by email with people recruited via VOICE, we ask that you maintain prompt, polite and clear communication. Members should be kept informed about the progress of their involvement and have clarity about the next steps. Ideally you should respond immediately to member queries, or within one working day at the latest.

You should also think about how you can promote your VOICE opportunity through both digital and traditional channels once it’s live, such as via Twitter, Facebook, newsletters, email, posters etc. While the PERC team can advise and support this to some extent through our own channels, the opportunity and its advertisement is your responsibility. A poster template is available on request.

If VOICE members have signed up to receive a weekly newsletter, this will be sent on Thursday afternoons. Your opportunity will appear in this newsletter if it is online only, is within the geographical remit selected by VOICE members or if they have selected to receive all new opportunities.

It varies depending on the type of opportunity and level of public involvement, and planning, required. We aim to publish opportunities within four working days of the request. Sometimes this can be quicker for Events where content already exists such as on an Eventbrite listing. However it can also take longer if additional information, planning and/or preparation is required before putting it live.

We ask that you respond to requests for additional information promptly in order to be considerate of the teams' time who are supporting your engagement work and to avoid unnecessary delays. Where opportunities are tied to a fixed date, such as an event, we recommend that they are posted at least 4 weeks prior to the deadline. This gives people sufficient time to plan their attendence or involvement where necessary.

The best advice is don't leave it to the last minute.

We are hoping to establish a short training session for staff and researchers wishing to use VOICE to facilitate and promote their own engagement and involvement activity. If you would be interested in attending this in order to get more guidance on using the platform, please contact voice@imperial.ac.uk.

PERC also run more general public involvement training sessions, in collaboration with the Imperial Clinical Trials Unit (ICTU), which are co-delivered with a member of the public. For more details, please visit our PPI Training page.

A primary use of VOICE is to facilitate a wide range of public involvement in research. We hope the platform enables researchers to reach wider, more diverse audiences that are both general and condition-specific and allow these lived experiences and perspectives to improve the translatability of research at all stages of the research cycle. But more traditional public engagement events can also be posted on VOICE. We understand these are a great way for public members to learn more about our research and may lead to more involved activity in the future.

VOICE is typically not to be used to recruit participants for a research study (where members act as subjects of research); however, some allowances can be made where participation would purely be advisory or qualitative in nature. If you are unsure whether your project would qualify, please contact voice@imperial.ac.uk to discuss your specific circumstances.

Imperial’s use of the VOICE online platform is only permitted for activities that are established, run and managed by Imperial College London, either solely or in collaboration with an external party. This means it is available for use by staff and students from Imperial College London undertaking active research here, but in some instances can also be used when a project is undertaken in partnership with external parties, providing Imperial College London are the lead stakeholders managing it.