There is an emerging consensus that evidence on patients’ perspectives provides crucial guidance for decision making throughout the medical product lifecycle (MPLC). Consid-ering the patient voice has become increasingly important for developers of new medical products and for authorities that assess, regulate and decide which products are effective, safe, well tolerated and cost effective [1, 2]. However, as key stakeholders, we lack a shared understanding about how to consider patient preferences in the MPLC [3]. This commentary captures opinions of thought leaders presenting at the symposium on “Patient preferences in the medical product lifecycle” in Basel, Switzerland in July 2019. The symposium was jointly sponsored by the Interna-tional Academy of Health Preference Research (http://www. iahpr .org) and the research project “Patient Preferences in Benefit and Risk Assessments during the Treatment Life Cycle” (PREFER; http://www.imi-prefe r.eu). This commen-tary is one of a series of papers reporting on health pref-erence research symposiums held alongside International Academy of Health Preference Research meetings [4–6].