The role of patients in improving the quality of healthcare is nowadays widely recognized. There is increasing interest in working in partnership with patients, seen as key stakeholders in the health sysyem, to jointly evaluate healthcare services and thereby create added value.

The patient's experience with healthcare is a reasearch hallmark of the MeS Laboratory, which has usually conducted surveys on patients with regard to hospital and emergency care, home      care, nursing, community and maternity care as well as primary care and way of life. The surveys were carried out through postal surveys, telephone surveys (Computer Assisted Telephone) or via web (Web Interviewing).

Finally, starting from 2017, the MeS Laboratory has implemented continuous observatories of patients experience (PREMs - Patient Reported Experience Measures) and of patients outcomes (PROMs - Patient Reported Outcome Measures) in Tuscany and in other Italian regions, according to the approach of assessing patients' healthcare pathways through systematic censuses.