Jan 13, 2022 | Finalists have been named for the sixth annual Participant Engagement Award. Their work will be highlighted, and a winner will be named at the upcoming 2022 Summit for Clinical Ops Executives (SCOPE), February 7-10 in Orlando, Fla. This year, the five finalist projects to be showcased include entries from inVibe Labs, Merck, Guardant Health, Infiuss Health, and Tryl.

The Participant Engagement Award (PEA) was established to recognize outstanding innovation in the areas of participant recruitment and retention for clinical trials and is dedicated to the memory of Jerry Matczak, who received the inaugural 2017 PEA. Submissions were invited from all facets of the industry, including sites, CROs, e-patient advisors, agencies, startups, and sponsors, and were reviewed by study participants, industry peers, and a panel of industry experts.

Finalists will be given two minutes to present their concepts prior to a Q&A session with judges. Submissions are reviewed based on improvement of access, awareness, and participation in clinical trials; for creativity, innovation, and regulatory and legal compliance; and for the ability to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. Judges are looking for entries that truly increase engagement from current, former, or new trial participants. Past winners exemplifying these criteria also include Medidata (2021), TrialScout (2020), CISCRP (2019), and Clara Health (2018).

Follow the process by joining us live for the presentations, or on Twitter with #BeLikeJerry and #SCOPE2022.

The 2022 PEA judges include:

• David Sall, President & CEO, Patient Enrollment Advisors; Co-Creator of the SCOPE Participant Engagement Award
• Kelly McKee, Vice President, Patient Recruitment and Registries, Medidata; Co-Creator of the SCOPE Participant Engagement Award
• Micah Lieberman, Executive Director, Conferences, Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI)
• Kimberly Richardson, Research Advocate, Founder, Black Cancer Collaborative
• Michelle Crouthamel DBA, Head, Digital Science, AbbVie
• Irfan Khan, MD, CEO, Circuit Clinical
• Gretchen Goller, Sr. Director, Head of Patient Recruitment, Clinical Development Operations, Seagen
• Alicia Staley, MBA, Trial Volunteer & Cancer Survivor; Vice President, Patient Engagement, Medidata

2022 Finalists

inVibe Labs

TrialPulse: Integrating the Patient Voice to Optimize and Validate Throughout the Drug Development Process

Built on the backbone of inVibe's Voice Research platform already used by hundreds of commercial life science teams, TrialPulse helps clinical teams systematically and cost-effectively integrate patient insights into drug development processes in six important areas: (1) The patient experience; (2) burden of disease; (3) unmet needs; (4) trial design; (5) recruitment asset evaluation; and (6) retention optimization. TrialPulse works by virtually recruiting a sample of real patients similar to a study's inclusion/exclusion criteria, providing them with relevant stimuli (e.g., protocol summaries, e-consent forms, recruitment materials), and prompting them to provide their specific thoughts/feedback via inVibe’s proprietary automated voice response (AVR) interview platform. All patient voice data is then collected and analyzed in an interactive, searchable, filterable online portal where sponsors can listen to the responses, share audio clips with other team members, and/or simply review the high-level executive summary created by inVibe analysts.

Merck

Back to Virtual Reality: Getting Real about Patient Engagement! 

When presented with a pediatric oncology protocol, we looked to find reasons that would make participation hard, aside from the obvious—children and caregivers are already burdened with their disease. Special populations (children) in clinical research can often bring unique enrollment barriers to operational execution, such as protocol requirements that translate into very long study visits. We wanted to consider how we could put patients first and create engaging and age-appropriate activities that allow children and families to pass the time during study visits. Cue technology and virtual reality! In collaboration with our vendor partner, we procured virtual reality headsets and leveraged both entertaining and calming content to offer trial participants an activity to pass the time. 

Guardant Health

Guardant GAP Program: Closing the GAP for Oncology Patients

The Guardant GAP program was established to allow patients to have access to a liquid biopsy (minimally invasive, NGS test) and be matched to clinical trials across sponsor companies. This represents an unmet medical need in the community and reduces time to treatment. The GAP program fulfills this need while helping sponsors identify potential patients and reduce trial timelines.

Infiuss Health

Connecting Africans to Global Clinical Trials

A group of 1.4 billion Africans (the most genetically diverse population) is excluded from clinical research and trials, leading to efficacy variations observed with vaccines and drugs used by Africans that were tested predominantly on white and European volunteers. Infiuss helps pharma, health providers, and researchers to find new patients, participants, and sites for clinical research and trials across Africa. We’ve built software to facilitate recruitment and engagement by sourcing eligible and diverse patients and participants for trials in under 60 minutes with 98% accuracy.

Tryl

Empathetic Patient Engagement System from Tryl

Tryl’s Empathetic Patient Engagement System is a new offering that guides participants through a compliance-ready journey to increase adherence while lowering dropouts. Tryl's engagement system responds to and anticipates the needs of trial participants and researchers. Tryl goes beyond conventional ePRO, sCOA, and eDiary systems by combining consumer-grade UX, applied behavioral science, passive data collection, dynamic personalization, predictive analytics, and headless architecture.