By Maxine Bookbinder  

 

September 13, 2013 | Eli Lilly and Company has issued a public challenge to transform clinical trials from intimidating to patient-centered. With $75,000 in prize money available, the Clinical Trial Visualization Redesign Challenge is a call to creative, public innovators outside pharma to reconstruct communication and designs in patient-centered ways. 

 

The pharmaceutical industry has engaged in the same patient-enrollment battle for years: stalled and terminated trials, lost revenue, and delayed access to potentially life-saving drugs. In 2011, Eli Lilly and Company launched Lilly Clinical Open Innovations (LCOI) to bring new insight and innovation into clinical research and development. 

 

LCOI, based in Lilly’s Indianapolis global headquarters, hopes to bridge the clarity gap between consumers and the medical community in order to increase patient participation through increased awareness, understanding, and access to trials. The Clinical Trial Visualization Redesign Challenge is one of LCOI’s current projects. 

 

This is LCOI’s first public challenge, says Jerry Matczak, Clinical Open Innovations Community Manager. “We put money out there in front of people with interesting ideas. It’s another way to source innovation in an open way and get things from the external to internal R&D. Open innovation allows greater innovation than any individual or organization can accomplish on its own.” Participants must submit a design mock-up and at least one image or browser viewable file. (See http://ctdesign.challengepost.com for submission requirements.) The deadline is October 2, 2013.

 

A total of $75,000 will be awarded in several categories, including a $35,000 grand prize. (Organizations with more than 75 employees are ineligible to win monetary prizes.) Eight judges, including industry experts, patient advocates, and Lilly representatives, will look for patient-friendly visualization, easy-to-comprehend information, mobile or web application ability, and trial participation impact on the patient. The winning ideas will be available for open access. Intellectual property will remain confidential; the challenge focuses on the actual method of how information about the trial is communicated. 

 

Accessibility to information is the first step in increasing trial participation; Matczak says the industry can do this, for example, by offering access to trial information through technologies such as smart phones, computers, and tablets. Even access to open registries, such as Clinicaltrials.gov, can be made more user-friendly. For example, medical information can be rewritten from scientific, technical jargon into “everyday English” or with understandable explanations that a person could click on an iPad or computer to read, one section at a time. The informed consent forms could be shared in a more visually-appealing and patient-friendly way. “A person could then look at the information and ask, ‘Am I fit for this trial?’” says Matczak. 

 

The biggest industry problem, stresses Matczak, are the pivotal Phase III trials, which are too often slowed or stopped because of insufficient participants and inadequate statistical power; the right number of participants is needed to prove—or disprove—a trial hypothesis. “These pose the greatest challenges and cost, including getting patients enrolled and the correct population identified.” 

 

Improvements to the enrollment process are a must, as Matczak explains. “Eighty-five percent of clinical trials have participation issues. Thirty percent have no enrollment.” Since 2010, pharmaceutical clinical trial enrollment has dropped 20% globally. 

 

Matczak believes that an open challenge offers untapped wisdom and creativity, resulting in greater trial participation and, ultimately, more life-saving therapies. “By acting openly, with honesty, transparency and integrity we intend to foster a community that will make a difference in people’s lives.