Winners announced for the 2025 Cambridge Patient and Public Involvement Showcase

There’s no doubt about it – Patient and public involvement (PPI) makes research better.

That was the clear takeaway from this year’s Cambridge PPI Showcase that took place last week in the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

More than 100 people turned up over the day to listen to researchers talk about how embedding PPI strengthened their research, and view posters displaying the same message.

And because it was a public-focused event, we then turned the tables and asked the audience to vote for their favourite presentation and poster.

Presentation winners

The audience’s favourite presenter in the morning was Senior Research Fellow Dr Marta Camacho’s talk on Public involvement in gut-brain axis & Parkinson’s disease research.

The winner among the afternoon’s presenters was Mr Dominic Summers, Consultant Transplant and Vascular Access Surgeon at Cambridge University Hospitals, for his talk Controversial research: how PPIE can get you over the starting line, in which he talked about his pilot study of organ donation following out of hospital cardiac arrest (or uDCD – uncontrolled donation after circulatory death) and how the pilot was only possible with the help of patients, PPIE groups and massive support from members of the public.

Mr Dominic Summers, Consultant Transplant and Vascular Access Surgeon at Cambridge University Hospitals, giving his presentation at the Cambridge PPI Showcase day

Poster winner

Fourteen posters from across the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and Anglia Ruskin University were on display throughout the day and the poster with the most votes was University of Cambridge MPhil student Vidisha Handoo’s Co-designed digital tools enhance engagement and improve community-based diagnoses of treatable sleep disorders in Pulmonary Hypertension patients. (See photo below.)

Dr Amanda Stranks, PPI and communications strategy lead for the NIHR Cambridge BRC said: “The PPIE showcase is always a great opportunity to really show researchers, patients and the public the difference that public involvement makes to our research across Cambridge and the East of England.

“We’ve heard some amazing examples of how patients and the public have changed the course of research simply by being asked what they think, and through sharing their experiences.

“I’d like to thank everyone involved on the day, including researchers from Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge and Hertfordshire Universities, Cambridge University Hospitals, the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, THIS Institute, NIHR BioResource and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Foundation Trust.

“And of course, the patients and members of the public who joined in and without whom none of this would be possible.”

MPhil student Vidisha Handoo’s winning poster as voted by the audience at the 2025 Cambridge PPI Showcase event

It was a great event, reminded me of why we do what we do and the passion behind it, so thank you for organising it and to all the presenters.

Audience member

• Want to find out more about Marta Camacho’s Blue Poop Challenge? Click here to watch her talk on Gut-brain interactions: hidden dialogues, recorded as part of NIHR Cambridge BRC’s PPI Talks.