Dear Innovators,
Thank you all for submitting your ideas to increase patient accrual to oncology clinical trials. The results are in! Though it was very difficult for us to choose the top 2 ideas, given the quality of all the submissions, we have finally selected the winners of the 1st and 2nd prizes of the Ideation phase of the Clinical Trial Innovation Prize.
Please join us in congratulating the winners of the both the 1st and 2nd prizes, as well as the People's Choice Award.
The FIRST PRIZE has been awarded to Team Helynx for their submission “Match Point: Matching Patients and Trials Via EHR”. Team Helynx is a start-up out of Caltech, UCLA and Harvard, and Dr. Jae Kim, a cardiothoracic surgeon at City of Hope. The trio has teamed up to create a unique system for automatically matching patients to the clinical trials for which they qualify using machine learning techniques to read patients’ Electronic Health Records (EHRs) to determine eligibility. This program will be piloted at the 13 community centers affiliated to City of Hope in southern California. The winning entry received $20,000 USD.
The SECOND PRIZE goes to Drs. Matt Gerber and Deanna Teoh of the Gynecologic Oncology Department at the University of Minneapolis for their submission “Fast, Fun & Friendly: Build Trust Before Research” that proposes to create an individualized Welcome App for each patient that presents at their clinic using video content that details the arc of care a patient will receive as well a clear and succinct message about clinical research and its benefits, dispelling myths that effective treatments will be withheld during the clinical trial. Gerber and Teoh’s idea won their team $5,000 USD.
The PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD was won by Noah Craft and the Science37 team for their entry “Meet NORA (Network Oriented Research Assistant)” that garnered the most votes during the Public Voting round. Craft is the co-founder and CEO for Science 37, a startup working to help patients take part in clinical research from the comfort of their own homes, using the concepts of telemedicine and a networked clinical trial platform, one in which investigators, coordinators and administrators are geographically dispersed and the trial is decentralized. This submission won $5,000 USD.
Many congratulations to the winning teams!
Those of you who didn't win a cash prize, don't lose heart! The organizers, Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and Free to Breathe will be working with ALL APPLICANTS to provide you guidance and resources to implement your ideas. We received some very innovative ideas that have potential in tipping the needle in oncology clinical trial recruitment, and we look forward to working with all of you to develop your ideas further by seeding collaborations with industry, academia and other partners. Please feel free to reach out to us for any help and guidance you might need to take your ideas further. We will be more than happy to help, in any way that we can!
Also, the second phase of the Clinical Trial Innovation Prize, the Implementation/Proof of Concept Challenge launches next week, on August 17, 2015 and is open to you all, as well as any team or individual that didn’t participate in phase one. One project will win $45,000 USD upon proving that the idea resulted in an increase in participation in cancer clinical trials. So, put your thinking caps on! The details of the Implementation Phase will be announced on this website on the 17th. Stay tuned!
For further questions about the Ideation phase or to get in touch with us for help in developing your ideas, please feel free to reach us at .
Onward,
Guneet Walia, PhD
Director, Research and Medical Affairs
Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation
San Carlos, CA
