eyeforpharma Awards: Recognizing and celebrating innovation

Celebrating winners makes genuine innovation visible, setting the bar higher and broadening the possibilities for pharma by showing what can be achieved



At the eyeforpharma Awards we strive to reward, support and incentivise innovation, especially when it comes to the value pharma offers patients and customers. We only recognize meaningful innovation which takes our industry, our reputation and our impact forward and the entries are measured objectively by external judges.
 
I was amazed by the quality of entries this year. With 500 nominations, our judges – a mixture of patients and health professionals – deliberated hard for many hours, finally settling on just 16 winners, each exemplifying the very best work in pharma. 
 
By ‘best’, we mean not just internal successes (like revenue or ROI), but real impact on patients, carers and international health systems.
 
This is the night of the year when I feel most proud to work in this industry – the range and quality of solutions shows we can make a real difference. Every finalist has pushed us as an industry into a better place. 
 
Huge congratulations to everyone.
 
The winners are:
 
Most Valuable Healthcare/HCP Initiative 
 
BioMarin
Reaching target physicians globally with a high-quality, in-depth educational message about a rare disease was the challenge BioMarin faced when it set out to educate HCPs around the world about MPS (mucopolysaccharide) disorders. It used Figure 1, a mobile app tht healthcare professionals use to share cases to improve patient outcomes. Together with Dr. Chris Hendriksz, a pediatrician and well-regarded expert in MPS, they collaborated to identify a broader educational initiative to address an unmet need. For Figure 1, this campaign represented a chance to prove the value of both the app and its educational platform on a global scale.
 
Most Valuable Collaboration 
 
Teva + Direct Relief Collaboration
Teva and Direct Relief have a long-standing partnership to deliver essential, lifesaving prescription medicine to patients in underdeveloped regions around the world as well as support a network of clinics in the U.S. Teva makes additional donations in times of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and tornadoes. Collaborations and partnerships in the form of product donations, grant programs such as EnhancingAccess2Care, research and thought leadership around MCC, and convening dialogue and engagement with national and global stakeholders help galvanize new research and seed novel solutions that provide tangible value to patients, their carers, families and healthcare providers.
 
Most Valuable Breakthrough/Discovery 
 
nQ Medical
AI company nQ Medical has developed a computational biomarker proven to substantially change disease management for a wide range of neuromotor and neurocognitive disorders. Users type and tap touchscreens on electronic devices and the nQ platform, neuroQWERTY, analyses user interaction, to capture functional decline related to neurodegenerative disorders. It allows for precise monitoring of small changes in neurodegeneration that frequently go unnoticed by clinicians. nQ allows for 24/7, passive, and cost-effective remote monitoring of disease progression and the impact of drug therapy.
 
Most Promising MVP/Pilot 
 
Ascensia Diabetes Care
Better health outcomes and lower healthcare costs arising from behavioural science insights have been the aim of Acensia’s Interconnected Diabetes Management Solution (IDMS) for People with T2D. The solution combines guidance from a Certified Diabetes Educator (CDE) via a mobile app with a self-management tool. The solution helps patients navigate all aspects of daily life, from meal planning and physical activity to mental well-being and sleep habits, encouraging small changes to improve diabetes management. 
 
Most Promising Agile Transformation 
 
UCB
PVU Internal Engine
The neurology division of UCB is challenging local teams to become experts in their local healthcare “ecosystems” via its agile go-to-market model to uncover shared interests with stakeholders and partnering to create new opportunities for patient value creation and increased return on healthcare investment. UCB worked first-hand with other companies that had been through the process in the US and EU in industries from banking to logistics to manufacturing. Its pilot has already demonstrated a measurable difference in company performance across all key measures.
 
Most Valuable Clinical/Access Initiative 
 
Sanofi
Patient Informed Research & Development
Since 2011 Sanofi has been using direct patient input to inform its research priorities and also reduce the time and burden required to complete development stage clinical trials. Patient input into clinical trial design across all therapeutic areas is now helping Sanofi achieve a year-over-year acceleration in its time to market. It is now third in industry benchmarking. 
 
Most Valuable Awareness Initiative 
 
Merck
A Touch of Sugar
Merck’s documentary “A Touch of Sugar”—aimed to create an unprecedented and far-reaching educational initiative that would draw greater attention to the fact that more than 30 million Americans have diabetes, to the factors that impact T2D outcomes and to activate the community to seek appropriate treatment. It tells its powerful story through the voices of people united in their struggle with this chronic disease. Along with two versions of the documentary—a short-form and long-form—a third edition of the film was created, “Un Toque de Azúcar,” focusing specifically on the Hispanic population, a key demographic for Merck.
 
Most Valuable Data & Insights Initiative 
 
LEO Innovation Lab
Imagine
Free skin tracking smartphone app, Imagine helps patients stay in control of their skin condition. Users can track skin lesions as they change over time by taking pictures, empowering them to draw correlations with lifestyle triggers, assess the efficacy of treatments, and find optimal treatment and lifestyle faster. The data also bridges the gap between consultations by creating visibility on the progression of skin lesions. LEO is using the extensive imaging data from Imagine to develop a diagnosis platform capable of identifying skin conditions from smartphone images. Its database comprises thousands of images representing diverse skin types from around the globe. 
 
Most Valuable Service or Digital Therapy 
 
Annexus Health
AssistPoint: Reducing the administrative burdens across the patient journey
Reducing the administrative burdens across the patient journey is the aim of AssistPoint a single enterprise, cloud-based solution, used by provider groups to manage the financial assistance cycle management process to help ensure patients receive the right treatment at the right time at less cost by improving the administration and coordination of workflow and services along the patient care continuum.
 
Global Health Pioneer 
 
Teva and Multiple Chronic Conditions (MCCs)
Teva analysis revealing that 30% of adults globally have more than two chronic conditions led it to seek insights from patients, patient advocates, caregivers, health care professionals (HCPs), health system representatives, and global health leaders. It realized that patients with MCC make up a whole new segment, with not only common challenges but also potentially predictable co-morbidities or clustering of their conditions. In the light of its findings it has decided to make MCC a priority, gathering partners to identify solutions by championing this pressing issue and elevating it on the global public health agenda.
 
Patient Champion Award: Patient Advocate 
 
Alicia Staley, Senior Director, Patient Engagement, Medidata
On July 4th, 2011, three-time cancer survivor Alicia Staley and fellow survivor Jody Schoger
organized their first tweet chat for breast cancersurvivors using the hashtag #BCSM, for Breast Cancer Social Media. Staley and Schoger have since built a powerful global online alliance, 20,000 members strong, dedicated to empowering cancer patients and caregivers through evidence-based information and compassionate support. Eight years later, #BCSM is widely recognized as the gold standard for disease-specific social networks, in part due to its rigorous focus on medical evidence. The first of its kind, #BCSM has spawned dozens of other cancer support communities.
 
Patient Champion Award: Pharma
 
Novartis 
Doing Everything Differently to Make a Difference
Novartis convened The Novartis Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) Team to increase awareness about a disease few know or care about, and most importantly, and to drive a sense of validation in the community. To this end, they created Generation S, a multichannel initiative to encourage people in the sickle cell community to come together, speak out, and be heard. Generation S provides a platform for people impacted by this disease to  share their stories and to shine a light on the SCD  experience.
 
Entrepreneur Award: Health Solution 
 
PARx Solutions
Improving Patient Access to Prescribed Meds
PARx Solutions helps patients get the medication that their physician believe is most appropriate by helping prescribers overcome the cumbersome, frustrating and time-consuming challenges resulting from prescription Prior Authorization (PA) – the requirement by a patient’s health plan to approve a specific medication for reimbursement. Without this, many patients cannot receive insurance coverage for prescriptions.  Physicians using PARx end up with more patients receiving the originally prescribed medication for their conditions while saving time on administrative activities. PARx also streamlines the process for the prescriber.
 
Entrepreneur Award: Patient Solution 
 
Saarathi 
Ranjeeta Vinil
Saarathi Healthcare (SH) was the first company in India focused on the unmet need of disease awareness, patient counseling, disease management, early diagnosis and treatment compliance reaching every part of the country due to highly integrated, multi-lingual tele-counseling with tested technology and data management. Its network of trained field paramedics covers almost 60 cities, leading to better service penetration in clinics, hospitals, homes and rural areas. SH has tied up with various companies in providing innovative point-of-care devices to help screen patients early during screening camps across India.
 
Most Valuable Education Initiative
 
Janssen
Journey to Better Health
In collaboration with the independent nonprofit CISCRP (Center for Information & Study on Clinical Research Participation) and LA-based media production company Wondros, Janssen designed, tested and toured its first-of-its-kind “Journey to Better Health” recreational vehicle. Its interactive educational displays and multi-lingual ambassadors helped explain the clinical research process and advances in medical knowledge and provided next steps for individuals who were interested in evaluating clinical research options in their communities. The unit visited 10 events attended by a quarter of million people in the Los Angeles area in 2018, generating more than 750 unique conversations about clinical research.
 
Lifetime Achievement
 
Kenneth A. Getz, Chairman, CISCRP
Director of Sponsored Research at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development
Kenneth is the chairman of CISCRP – a non-profit organization that he founded to educate and raise public and patient awareness of the clinical research enterprise. He is also the Director of Sponsored Research and an associate professor at the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, Tufts University School of Medicine where he conducts research programs on drug development management strategies and tactics, outsourcing, global investigative site and patient recruitment practices and policies.
 


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