Progress Award in Healthcare and Scientific Communications

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The Innovation categories have been re-badged to emphasise the importance of learning and demonstrating how a different approach has helped progress our knowledge and understanding of a problem. We are still looking for examples of bravery, disruption, innovation and work that just makes us go ‘wow’!

As with 2025, we are seeking entries directly into the category and we are also asking Group Heads to nominate work from their categories that they believe meet the criteria.

Shortlisted entrants will be invited to present to an independent judging panel in May. They will be required to give a short presentation on their entry, focussing on how the work progressed understanding and knowledge, and will then be asked questions by the judges relating to their entry. The organisers will be unable to send invitations before 18th May.

This category recognises communication, scientific, business or technological innovation initiatives that have ultimately created value through a compelling and differentiated approach to one or more of the following:

  • Customer/stakeholder engagement
  • Use of communication or marketing channels
  • Provision of patient services and/or information
  • Provision of information/services for healthcare professionals
  • Healthcare collaboration with one or more parties.
  • Digital health innovations solutions and products
  • Agency or client internal projects
  • Medical communications
  • Education/training
  • Pre-commercialisation work
  • Customer/stakeholder engagement with the primary objective of furthering scientific understanding
  • Provision of scientific information or clinical services for healthcare professionals

If the submission has been entered previously, the current entry must provide benchmarks to clearly demonstrate how the programme was evaluated and how it has developed over time.

Judges will be looking for:

  • A clearly defined baseline or starting point, supported by insight or evidence
  • A purposeful, well-reasoned approach to achieving progress
  • Evidence that the change or improvement is meaningful, measurable and relevant OR clearly learnings from the work. What do we know now, that we didn’t know before?
  • Demonstration of improvement in communication practice, capability, quality or impact
  • Clear alignment between the identified challenge, the approach taken and the outcomes or learnings
  • Signs that the progress is sustainable, transferable or embedded into future work
  • Responsible and ethical advancement that benefits audiences, patients, partners or teams
  • Work that makes us go ‘I wish I’d done that’

JUDGING CRITERIA AND ENTRY FORMAT:

Entry Title

Please give a simple title for your entry of no more than ten words

Executive Summary – 200 words. 0 (zero) marks (not reviewed by the judges)

The Executive Summary will be used if the entry is selected as a finalist. Entrants should provide a concise overview explaining why the project, programme or event is award-worthy. This should highlight what makes the work unique, differentiating or innovative, and why it stands out within its category.

Main entry

It is essential to provide links to platforms/apps/videos etc to help the judges get an experience of any digital or immersive experiences, plus if passwords are required, ensure these are also included.

1. Budget Band Information, as below:

Band A under £10,000

Band B £10,001-£25,000

Band C £25,001-£50,000

Band D £50,001-£100,000

Band E £100,001-£200,000

Band F over £200,001.

If permission has not been granted by any stakeholder for the budget band to be disclosed, this must be clearly stated within the submission.

Budget band must take into consideration total cost of the activity described in the entry – if you are including it in your tactical description then the full costs of that activity must be accounted for here.

  • Failure to provide the budget band seriously impacts the judge’s ability to assess the entry against other entries and may result in the entry being disqualified
  • The budget band provides important context for judging the innovation, delivery and impact of a piece of work.
  • Impressive work is not always dependent on budget size, so there is no right or wrong budget.

2. Why does this qualify for the Progress category? – 20 marks (500 words)

  • Describe the status quo – the usual way of doing things and why there was the impetus to do things differently
  • Please detail where the innovation or disruption is within the entry. This recognises that they might exist within a more standard project. Please ensure the judges can understand what aspect of the entry they are judging
  • Explain what it was about this work that those involved were particularly proud of – what was the ‘wow’ moment
  • State which region the work was implemented in with reference to any country compliance guidelines that had to be adhered to
  • Explain at what stage the work is currently at, e.g. proof of concept, beta-testing, piloting, roll-out, commercialisation?

3. Situation Analysis and Benchmarking – 10 marks (300 words)

In this section you should show the judges how well you understood the situation at the start of the project. You should describe the insight that this innovation was based on and really importantly, why the innovation was needed.

  • Clearly lay out benchmark data and market knowledge that you will refer to in your measurement of effectiveness later
  • Show the judges the best benchmarking information, data and insights you have about uptake of health interventions, current practice, defining/segmenting audiences, identifying educational or information needs, which channels will best reach the audience, competitive environment, creative landscape before the start of your work
  • Why was a different approach required for this audience and why now?

4. Objectives – 10 marks (250 words)

  • Describe the objectives for the project or programme and how these will be measured
  • If the innovation or disruption was part of a larger programme, what was the specific objective for that element?

5. Strategy – 10 marks (250 words)

  • Please outline what your strategy was and why
  • Refer to the data and insight in the situation analysis section
  • Explain why this was the right strategy and any points to emphasise bold or innovative strategy selection
  • Specify what previous or traditional practice you were trying to disrupt and why this is required to meet the stated objective for your audience?

6. Implementation – 20 marks (400 words)

  • Please describe how you implemented the project or programme
  • Please briefly outline why these specific tactics were selected
  • For a programme this should include describing what tactics were deployed to implement the strategy
  • For a meeting or stand-alone event this should describe how the meeting or event was delivered

7. Effectiveness: Outcomes vs Objectives – 5 marks (400 words)

  • Show clearly how the programme or project delivered against the stated objectives – or what you learned and what you are doing as a result of this learning
  • Where possible, show how you’ve applied these learnings to demonstrate the value of the experiment even where the results fell short of what was expected
  • Help the judges to understand how the effectiveness was measured so they can judge the strength of the evaluation
  • Include comments from third party stakeholders in this section but ONLY if they clearly help to demonstrate the impact of the work and were a planned part of the measurement approach

8. Progress and Recommendations for the Future – 15 marks (400 words)

In innovation, the outcome can be positive or negative. The effectiveness can therefore be judged as the value of how the work has progressed our understanding and knowledge

  • In what way has this driven progress?
  • What do we know now, that we didn’t know before?
  • Why are the learnings valuable and how could you improve in the future?

Judges’ top tips

Judges will reward entries that tell a clear, authentic story of innovation, progress and improvement. Strong submissions will:

  • Make it really clear in the entry where the innovation lies – it may be a small part of a larger project
  • Make the “before and after” clear, simple and compelling
  • Avoid overstating claims; be transparent about what changed and why it matters
  • Support all impact claims with evidence, even if early-stage
  • Be honest about learnings. Not all innovations are fully successful; we are also looking for work that has progressed our knowledge and understanding in some way
  • Explain how the progress is sustainable or influencing ongoing work
  • Keep the narrative structured, concise and focused on the meaningful uplift achieved

Supporting Materials

Please only send information that helps the judges to see how you researched, planned, implemented and measured the programme within each specific category, e.g.:

Information illustrating how the strategy was brought to life is helpful but we don’t need a copy of every item

  • Information supporting the evaluation and measurement is the most relevant
  • ESSENTIAL: a summary sheet must be supplied detailing each piece of supporting material and clearly identifying where evidence can be found to support claims in the entry
  • PLUS: An approved visual image or video that supports the entry for use in print, results pages online and in the AV.

Work conducted between January 2024 and December 2025 is eligible for submission. Projects or programmes previously entered into the Communiqué Awards must include benchmark data showing how effectiveness has been assessed over time; entries without this information will be excluded from the judging process.