Patients have an important role to play in the development of new therapies, and their voice needs to be heard.

Informed comment from patient advocacy groups dealing with interventional therapies requires an understanding of the IDEAL framework.

Equally important, patients need to be involved in the ongoing discussions over the IDEAL recommendations.

These are a work in progress, and will require considerable research to determine whether the approaches recommended are in fact the most effective.

Patients and their advocates can make a vital contribution to this debate by informing it about their values and their opinions on various study design options which patients might be asked to become involved with.