How is Voice® bringing academics, research, and the public together?

16 April 2026 | By: Newcastle University | 4 min read

Illustration of researchers working together across different media

How does one simple platform offer researchers access to thousands of minds? Voice® offers experts direct access to research-ready citizens, ready to share their lived experience and knowledge.

The Voice® platform provides researchers with straightforward access to an ever-growing member community, made up of a wide range of individuals living across the UK, each with their own lifetime of insights, wisdom, vision, and lived experience. Researchers benefit from direct access to work with members with the right experience, skills, and knowledge to both inform and co-produce their research so it makes real-world impact. And in return, members can contribute to research in genuinely meaningful ways, learn about new technologies, and shape the future of discoveries and developments to help their own and future generations.

Bringing researchers and the public together

The platform harnesses the insights, wisdom, vision, and lived experience of patients so research is informed and co-produced by its users and audience. Having ‘one front door’ makes it easier for communities – of all ages and backgrounds – to access and influence research and innovation at multiple organisations at the same time through the same co-designed and usable platform.

‘By working with Voice members, you get that pragmatic wisdom, but also the real honesty about what it’s like to live with and encounter disabilities or diseases.’ - Andrew, Senior Lecturer and Epidemiologist

Voice® members contribute through a range of activities including co-designing new products, testing services and participating engaging in surveys, polls, discussions, workshops, panels, advisory groups, and being a public representative within research teams.

The goal is that, together, experts and the public can share their insights and lived experience in order to solve problems, have greater joint impact, and improve services and products for a population where the proportion of older people (over 65) is ever-increasing, driven by rising life expectancy and lower birth rates.

To keep up with the needs of this ageing population, intelligence on the public's shared stories, emotional insights, aspirations, and generational strengths is sorely needed. Voice® aims to integrate these different sources of human knowledge with big data, AI, ethics, and technical ingenuity to create ‘Ageing Intelligence’ - a new approach to business that helps organisations identify and capitalise on opportunities in longevity economies. These opportunities are growing all the time. The global longevity sector has become a flourishing part of the financial system, with a projected global value of over £20 trillion pounds by 2023. It’s estimated that by this date, over half of all domestic consumer spending growth will be due to citizens aged over 55.

How does Voice® actually work?

With its suite of tools and digital infrastructure, Voice®’s simple and instinctive functionality helps experts to co-design, co-produce and co-develop projects – all in one place.

The platform acts as a bridge between university researchers, the public, community partners, businesses, and external organisations. Voice® members are passionate about research and innovation, and are ready and willing to support a wide range of research, including product design and development. Via the platform, researchers manage the end-to-end process of recruiting community members, from advertising the project to managing applications from members and contacting successful individuals.

‘By bringing people with lived experience into our research team, we are much stronger and now have NIHR funding as a result. But the most important thing, I think, is that they’ve helped us to understand what the interventions are that we need to be focussing on. The impact has been absolutely massive. It’s completely transformed our thinking.’ – Dr Colette Hawkins, Associate Clinical Lecturer

Researchers can use the platform to recruit the members with the right demographics and experience to fit their projects and work with them towards a shared goal.

The platform is designed to be as easy to use as possible. Research centres manage their own dashboard to publish and co-ordinate opportunities for members, with tailor-made permissions and analytics reports.

Communication is made simple, too. It’s easy to create private or public groups for recruited members, to receive real-time feedback from them, and to share results so members can understand the impact they’ve made. Researchers can choose to receive automated notifications, and real-time messages from the researcher’s engagement support team when needed.

The Voice® community

At the heart of the platform is the Voice® community.

Voice®’s member network is ever-growing, covering a wide range of experience to help research be informed and user-ready for the public. There are currently thousands of community members on the platform, and over 3,000 members regularly involved in research. In the recent Member Survey, when asked what people value most about being part of Voice, the top response was ‘the value of making a contribution.’. Members care about making a genuine difference to the future of research, and are primed to help.

A Voice community member and researcher work together.

Living in every corner of the UK, members are a range of ages, genders, and ethnicities. Active individuals in the Voice community range from 18 to their 90s, and so can relate a huge range of life experiences.

Meet the member: Hazell Jacobs

At 91, Hazell Jacobs is full of life, curiosity, and an unstoppable passion for learning. Living in Richmond, London, she has a wide range of life experiences, from working as a Samaritan in San Francisco to learning Italian and chess in her nineties.

Photograph of Hazell Jacobs, a member of the Voice Community

Hazell first discovered Voice® through an event in Richmond.

‘They put out a notice about an all-day seminar at the Business Design Centre. It was quite an adventure – I’d never been inside one of those big office buildings before, with all the security and badge checks. I must have been in my eighties at the time. I was just this little old lady sitting at a table with the head of Lambeth Council, a doctor and all these professionals. And there I was, representing the everyday person. That was ten years ago, and I’ve been involved ever since.’ - Hazell Jacobs

Hazell’s insights about living as an older person have shaped the development of academic research across many different areas, including the future of a paperless NHS.

‘He didn’t seem to realise that many older people don’t have computers or smartphones to access their appointments online. It made me so angry - he was completely out of touch!’ - Hazell Jacobs

Hazell is an example of how older people – so often underrepresented in research – have an invaluable part to play in collaborative design.

Join the Voice® community

Interested in involving the public in your research? Take your first step towards greater impact today.

Find out how Voice® can enhance engagement with the community connected to your research.

What is NICA?

The National Innovation Centre for Ageing (NICA) is a world-leading organisation which aims to co-develop and bring to market products and services which help us all to live longer, healthier lives. NICA brings together cross-competence professionals and researchers, commercialisation experts, scientists, innovators, and technologists with the public, to transform intelligence into actions and solutions.

Get in touch with NICA to discuss more about Ageing Intelligence and how its knowledge could transform your research and improve millions of lives.

How is Voice® bringing academics, research, and the public together?

How does one simple platform offer researchers access to thousands of minds? Voice® offers experts direct access to research-ready citizens, ready to share their lived experience and knowledge.

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What is Voice®?