By Clinical Research News Staff

February 17, 2021 | Finalists have been named for the fifth annual Participant Engagement Award, 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 five projects to be showcased include entries from Datacubed; Havas Lynx Faze; Medidata; a partnership between CISCRP, Praxis, RTM360, MediaPlanet, and USA Today; and Signant Health.

The 2021 finalists will present their projects at the Summit for Clinical Ops Executives, SCOPE, held virtually next month, March 2-4. Based on the presentations, judges will vote, and the 2021 winners will be announced live at SCOPE. Follow the process by joining us live for the presentations, or on Twitter with #BeLikeJerry and #SCOPE2021.

The Participant Engagement 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 for Lilly’s “aBuzz aBout Clinical Trials” project. 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 Participant Engagement Award judges include:

• 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
• Micah Lieberman, Executive Director, Conferences, Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI)

The five entries that will be highlighted during the 2021 Participant Engagement Awards are:

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.

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.

Patient Centricity by Design
By Medidata

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.  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 our Patient Design Studios.  Our 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.

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.

#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.