The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF) is one of 14 finalists selected to attend the "Inspiring Hope" Ideathon, an initiative to raise awareness of clinical trial participation and develop solutions to address this critical need in the research process. The Foundation was chosen for its submission around promotion of its online clinical study Fox Insight, a platform for people with Parkinson's disease and their loved ones to contribute health and wellness data from their own homes to help shape research priorities toward better treatments.
Members of the Fox Insight team will participate in a two-day workshop hosted by the Center for Information and Study on Clinical Research Participation and INC Research Holdings, Inc. in Boston on September 27 - 28 to further develop and cultivate plans for enhanced recruitment of the study tool. One winning project will be awarded $10,000 toward implementation of their idea.
Across all diseases, 85 percent of clinical trials finish late due to difficulties enrolling participants and nearly one-third of trials fail to recruit a single subject. Leveraging technology to remove traditional research participation barriers (such as geography, transportation, cost and time), Fox Insight gathers user-generated data through digital questionnaires and smart devices. MJFF will make de-identified study data available to the scientific community to broaden understanding of the experience of Parkinson's disease and inform patient-centric research priorities and therapeutic discovery. Currently with 4,800 participants, the study aims to enroll an additional 10,000 study participants in 2017.
"We're honored to have been selected as a finalist and to be a part of a larger conversation around clinical trial participation awareness. Many patients don't realize they have an important role to play in research," said Sohini Chowdhury, senior vice president of research partnerships at MJFF. "With tools like Fox Insight, we hope to engage more people into the process and let them know they can help shape the research conversation through their participation."
The Ideathon workshop will allow MJFF to collaborate with other field-wide innovators to define advanced strategies for meeting this recruitment goal. All finalists will present their refined project proposals to a panel of judges, who will award the $10,000 prize at the end of the two days.
For more information about Fox Insight, visit www.foxinsight.org.