In a recent editorial Laura Porter discusses the importance of patient engagement in research in a publication titled The Importance of Patient Engagement to Improve Healthcare Research and Safety. She not only acknowledges the benefits but also the challenges of incorporating patients at the level of basic research. The principles of “reciprocal relationships, co-learning, partnership, trust, transparency, and honesty” are essential characteristics of patient engagement in research and healthcare in general. Some of these challenges can be alleviated by adopting a global definition of patient engagement, addressing the issue of training, having consensus on guidelines for patient engagement and how to formally document and share the experiences to enable comparisons between methods and conduct, ultimately resulting in a measurable parameter.