Medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) represent 10-30% presentations in general medicine settings leading to high medical utilization, disability and costs. Clinicians may find MUS hard to manage, treatments have limited effect and patients often feel not taken seriously. This situation has prompted the European Association of Psychomatic Medicine(EAPM) to publish a research agenda in this domain that identifies patient preferences as a research priority. The James Lind Alliance(JLA) moderates such endeavours, however not yet with patients with MUS. A patient platform is available to do this in the Netherlands, but not yet in the UK. Hence we propose to set up a partnership between the University of York(UoY), Tilburg University(TiU), and the patient platform of Clinical Centre of Excellence for Body Mind and Health(CLGG), the Netherlands, to support patients, carers and clinicians to do this, to acquire funding
and to co-design future research to develop better treatment and care.