By Clinical Research News Staff

March 3, 2021 | Live at SCOPE yesterday, the winner of the 2021 Participant Engagement Award was chosen by a panel of judges. Patient Centricity by Design, a project from Medidata, was named the grand prize winner. 

The life science industry frequently uses patient centricity as a buzzword but promoting the idea of patient centricity without action dilutes the term’s meaning and frustrates patients, according to the entry led by Alicia Staley. To go beyond the buzzword, Medidata established patient centricity by design (PCbD), the formal process of infusing the patient perspective into the software development life cycle to create technical solutions that improve the overall patient experience in clinical research interactions. Each Medidata product is reviewed and approved by Patient Advocates as part of the Patient Design Studios. Patient advocates are paid consultants who leverage their expertise in evaluation for key points of patient inclusion, resulting in superior products and improved patient experiences. 

SCOPE’s Participant Engagement Award is the industry’s premier effort to highlight creative work in clinical research that helps better engage and understand research participants. The award aims to inspire innovation and change in how the clinical trials industry communicates with participants. The Award embodies the values and personal accomplishments of Jerry Matczak, Clinical Open Innovations Community Manager at Eli Lilly, who passed away soon after receiving the inaugural Participant Engagement Award in 2017. Since then, the award has been dedicated to Matczak in the hopes that it will serve as a reminder of his ideals and accomplishments

The 2021 finalists present their projects yesterday at the Summit for Clinical Ops Executives, SCOPE. The 2021 Participant Engagement Award judges included David Sall, President & CEO, Patient Enrollment Advisors; Co-Creator of the SCOPE Participant Engagement Award; Kelly McKee, Senior Director, Patient Recruitment and Registries, Medidata; Co-Creator of the SCOPE Participant Engagement Award; Phyllis Kaplan, Trial Volunteer and Patient Advocate; Senior Project Manager, Health Communication Services, Center for Information & Study on Clinical Research Participation (CISCRP); Ramona Burress, Assoc Director, Diversity & Inclusion in Clinical Trials, Janssen R&D LLC; Irfan Khan, MD, CEO, Circuit Clinical, TrialScout; and Micah Lieberman, Executive Director, Conferences, Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI).

In addition to Medidata’s winning entry, four other projects were showcased at the event. Projects from Havas Lynx Faze and Datacubed were named runners up. 

Suffering Behind the Selfies By Havas Lynx Faze 

Suffering Behind the Selfies is a campaign built on patient insight with emotional weight. The goal is to involve real patients in the heart of campaign and story, of endurance through both physical and psychological suffering in isolation. And through this authenticity and patient insight, to empathize with and connect to an audience fatigued with symptom led advertising. 

Vaccine Trials: Prevent Low Data Quality and High Patient Dropout By Datacubed

A top 5 pharma company worked with Datacubed Health to automate case alerts to capture higher quality data and applied the principles of behavioral science to strengthen patient engagement. The result? A 95% capture rate for adverse events and 95% patient compliance. 

Signant and CISCRP were given honorable mentions: Signant for industry collaboration with the patient and CISCRP for continuing to lead by example. 

#NoGoingBack: A Pledge to Continue Advancing Clinical Trials Globally By Signant Health 

As an industry, we learned bold new ways to conduct trials due to COVID-19. The #NoGoingBack social movement has one simple goal: to unite sponsors, sites, providers, advocacy groups, and other industry professionals who commit to honoring the lessons learned and preserving the progress made in clinical trials. The movement, launched by Signant Health in partnership with Craig Lipset (Clinical Innovation Partners), Allyson Small (SCRS), Maimah Karmo (Tigerlilly Foundation), and Sung Poblete (Stand Up to Cancer) has more than 35 Signatory companies and over 1,000 pledges from individuals throughout the industry.

Appreciating Medical Heroes for their Gift of Participation through Mass Media Channels By a partnership between CISCRP, Praxis, RTM360, MediaPlanet, and USA Today

These two large-scale educational media campaigns, print and digital, are launched four times a year to build clinical research awareness within diverse patient communities and among the general public. These campaigns deliver important information to readers with a focus on improving public perception of the clinical research industry, reinforcing rebuilding and reinforcing trust, communicating the benefits and risks of participation, and bridging communication and knowledge gaps between patients, care partners and advocates, researchers, health care providers, and the general public.