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Thought leadership and innovation for the Pharmaceutical Industry

We have whittled it down to the final five. Here are the contenders for the Most Valuable Collaboration award

By Adam Chapman on Feb 5, 2019

What makes our species so unique is our ability to spread ideas. This cross-pollination has enabled peace and prosperity to flourish, and ignorance to be supplanted by understanding.

Each of the innovative programmes recognized in this year’s awards have made a meaningful contribution to improving people’s lives. Perhaps they have eased the burden on patients, or helped HCPs navigate the demands of their job, or entered a fruitful collaboration. Through sharing their ideas, we hope you too will be inspired.

The winner of this award will be a pharma-pharma or pharma-non-pharma initiative which clearly brings a new proposition to customers and/or healthcare systems, creates new value and redefines what is possible in our industry with a degree of lateral thinking. There is no limit to the number of parties who might be involved in the collaboration, however each collaboration must involve at least one biopharmaceutical company.

Here are the finalists:

LPEP 
Novartis

Every year over 200,000 people are newly diagnosed with leprosy, including thousands of children. Additionally, 2-3 million people are living with physical disability and stigmatization because of the disease.

In an effort to address continued transmission of the disease, NF launched the Leprosy Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (LPEP) project in 2014 in eight of the most affected countries - Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Myanmar, Tanzania and Sri Lanka.

The program provides preventative treatment to close contacts of newly diagnosed patients – such as family members or friends – to decrease the risk of transmission. The data collected from the project is being used to assess the feasibility of contact tracing and the provision of preventative treatment for leprosy under routine conditions in several countries, and to determine its impact on leprosy.

Aligning with global healthcare systems and organizations has yielded successful results. In 2018, the LPEP strategy was included in the first World Health Organization (WHO) Global Guidelines for the Prevention of Leprosy. This marked a significant change in global policy and formally recognized a new approach to leprosy elimination following decades without reform.

LPEP unified the Leprosy community and accelerated progress toward a world without leprosy and demonstrated what could be achieved by working in partnership across multiple countries. This was a driving force for the creation of a Global Partnership for Zero Leprosy (GPZL), which launched in January 2018.

The real-world evidence generated by the LPEP program and its adoption into the WHO guidelines has primed the accelerated uptake of the innovation into routine practice within countries. National Leprosy Control programs and their leaders have revitalized their policy, operations and patient-provider relationships and strengthened their data management and surveillance systems.

Householder Health Ambassadors
Horizon Marketing Solutions
CABA Association
Sanofi Pasteur

We increasingly live in a media saturated world. This has had a profound impact on the way we access health information and advice. Parents are more likely to seek medical answers online (22% use Facebook and 20% use YouTube. Among non-parents, 14% use Facebook and 12% use YouTube to search for healthcare related topics.) Additionally, there are health segments on daytime TV shows that are mostly watched by women. While the volume of health news and discussions is increasing, it becomes harder to determine appropriate and useful advice.

A collaboration between Sanofi Pasteur, Horizon Marketing Solutions and CABA Association sought to establish a robust, reliable and resourceful information hub for household decision makers on family health, who are mostly women.  

The collaboration led to the creation of the Householder Health Ambassadors project, which comprises a series of face-to-face meetings, and is also supported by social media and website.

These monthly meetings are moderated by a celebrity from a daytime TV show, and 3 doctors provide crucial family health information and explain about preventable diseases, while 2 celebrities tell their own health-related stories. At the end of a 2-hour meeting, a keypad questionnaire is completed by participants, who then take home a HHA certificate. 

To supplement the meetings, they created Instagram and Facebook accounts to provide ‘health info directly from doctors,’ and a YouTube channel for doctor's videos on family health and preventable diseases.

So far, the Householder Health Ambassadors project has held nine face-to-face meetings nationwide. More than 3.5 thousand people attended these meetings. Participants learned a lot from participating specialists and had the opportunity to ask health-related questions. We have created awareness on dangerous WOM, and related health issues. The HHA Instagram account today has over 7000 followers.

Travel with IBD
Crohn’s & Colitis UK, Takeda UK, IBD Passport and Aurora

Travel for people living with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) can be highly stressful. Takeda UK and the patient advocacy group Crohn’s & Colitis UK were both working to improve the day-to-day experience for those living with IBD.

Both parties quickly realized the opportunity for true collaboration and partnership to maximize their individual efforts. Travel with IBD mobilised the travel industry to take key actions that would make a real difference to people living with IBD.

The aim was for widespread adoption of accessible toilet signage across the UK’s 27 main travel hubs (airports, rail stations, service stations) and to raise public awareness that not every disability is visible.

The challenge was to motivate significant numbers of people to email travel hub bosses, calling for change.

A successful national launch of survey results to media gained public attention. The results of the initiative speak for themselves: members of the public sent 50,485 campaign emails and 15 travel hubs have committed to adopting accessible toilet signage to date.

The campaign continues to scale with training resources provided to travel hubs and has also expanded to Ireland. Furthermore, the increasing use of these new signs is raising awareness of different kinds of disabilities amongst the general population.

Next Generation Scientist Program
Novartis, University of Basel, different local institutes

Professional development opportunities for scientists in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are limited and not consistent compared to those in high-income countries. Moreover, there is a disproportionately low number of biomedical and clinical researchers relative to the high burden of disease in developing countries.   

To help address these needs, Novartis supports several mentorship programs for scientists and physicians from LMICs. The programs are designed to foster scientific and professional development and to build global health scientific capabilities and capacity.

The "Next Generation Scientist" (NGS) program is an intensive 3-month Fellowship hosted at Novartis labs in Basel. Guided by mentors, interns work on a jointly-agreed upon scientific or clinical research project and also participate in a leadership development program designed to enhance their decision-making and communication skills. Research projects expose selected scientists to state-of-the-art methodologies and leading experts in the fields while ensuring use within their home infrastructure.

Since 2014, Novartis has coordinated with the University of Basel on the program, which provides certification and accreditation at the end of the Fellowship. Its diverse pool of talent and belief in equal opportunity made it an obvious fit for the collaboration.    

Feedback on the program has been overwhelmingly positive. Fellows reported benefits in access to equipment and data; expedited completion of post-graduate qualification; and networking, reputation, and broadened perspectives on work ethic and culture. Fellows pointed to NGS as a factor in improved research productivity via publications, conference presentations, and success with funding applications and involvement in clinical trials. More than 80% reported ongoing contact with their mentors at Novartis or University of Basel, and nearly two-thirds reported ongoing regular contact with other Fellows.

Providing high quality and sustainable care for stable HIV patients
ViiV Healthcare – pharmaceutical partner Chelsea & Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – NHS partner Think Connect Change – Consulting partner Avegen – Technology partner

Advances in HIV care have meant that services now need to transform from acute centres of care to services that manage people living with a long-term condition. This patient population (referred to as ‘stable’ patients) is expanding and as a result of the aging demographic of this cohort and associated increase in comorbidities, a new set of clinical needs has emerged. New models of care are urgently needed.

ViiV Healthcare and Chelsea & Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust undertook a joint project to develop a new model of care that better meets the needs of this population. The result was a nurse-led, technology-enabled service centred around an Annual Review consultation to provide an all-round ‘health MOT’.

The joint pilot demonstrated positive patient-related and service outcomes with exceptionally high levels of patient satisfaction and significant improvement in quality indicators versus the national standard reported in 2018. The goal for the pilot service is to expand to other sites within the CWFT HIV directorate and to be tested in additional global centres who face similar challenges. 

Your exclusive opportunity to witness these, plus many other real world, successful case studies awaits! Find out more about the Awards Pitch Day Europe here.