The Porterhouse Medical Award for Innovation in Healthcare Communications

Summary of work

Right now, more than 300,000 people in the UK are living with a lifelong disease that many people have never heard of. In fact, the real number could be almost double that. Many of the people in the UK living with Crohn’s or Colitis feel that there’s a lack of awareness, empathy and understanding of their condition.

In My Shoes: 24 Hours with Crohn’s or Colitis – by Crohn’s & Colitis UK and Takeda, with the support of Electric Putty and Mearns & Pike – is an immersive app that enables people to step in the shoes of someone living with Crohn’s or Colitis.

The multichannel campaign to support the launch of the app resulted in 23,000 downloads of In My Shoes, over 200 media stories and a social reach of more than 700,000 people. This led to a 27% increase in both empathy and understanding of Crohn’s and Colitis and a significant decrease (almost 50%) in apathy towards the impact that these conditions can have on daily life.

It Takes Guts to talk about Crohn’s and Colitis and this campaign ignited that conversation.

Judges' comments

This was our standout winner. This work took what is now a common interface, an app, and used it to create an immersive experience. The innovation came from the way that the app was used to disrupt user's lives and allow doctors, family members and friends of people with Crohn's and Colitis a glimpse of what everyday life is like for them. It was great to see that this piece of work had longevity and was developed and honed over time. The measurement and results were really strong. This is a very worthy winner by using innovation for purpose.