Ana Rubio leads Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) at MicroTex, bringing a unique perspective shaped by her work bridging health research, community voices, and social impact across two continents. As a medical anthropologist with a background in biology, she specialises in ensuring that innovative health technologies don’t just work scientifically, they work socially, gaining the trust and understanding needed for real-world impact. Her role at MicroTex is to make sure the people this research aims to help are active partners in shaping it.
Background
Her career began in biological sciences at UNAM in Mexico, where fieldwork in rural communities revealed a persistent gap: scientifically sound health interventions often failed because they didn’t account for social realities or community trust. This led her to qualitative research and community engagement work across Mexico, including health literacy initiatives with Indigenous communities and vacinnation outreach with marginalised populations.
After completing an MSc in Medical Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, she joined SCONe, a nationwide Scottish project collecting retinal images for research into eye, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative diseases. She designed and delivered the project’s PPIE strategy, securing funding and building partnerships across patient organizations, charities, NHS bodies, and universities. Her research at SCONe identified a critical barrier: early diagnostic technologies depend on people attending eye examinations before symptoms appear, yet most only seek care reactively. Her qualitative research led to new health promotion approaches reframing eye exams as preventive interventions.
PPIE benefits both research and communities. It reveals design flaws early, identifies barriers to participation, and ensures technologies are acceptable before major investment. For communities, it provides transparency about health data use and delivers immediate value through education and dialogue, rather than requiring years of waiting for potential treatments.
Why PPIE Matters for MicroTex
At MicroTex, PPIE ensures that patient and public voices inform research design, ethical frameworks, and decision-making from the outset. Ana’s work focuses on building relationships with patients, families, and clinicians to understand their perspectives around MicroTex research and address questions of trust, acceptability, and understanding around novel medical devices that will improve drug development approaches. MicroTex is committed to giving back to communities through dialogue, education, and transparent information-sharing about their research.