Finalist
The ‘Know your DAS’ App Launch Campaign
Summary of work
Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a severely debilitating disease that affects around 690,000 people in the UK. Despite this, between 30-80% of RA patients do not take their treatments properly. Market research conducted by Roche UK and The National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society (NRAS) confirmed the resulting burden: only 5% of patients surveyed felt they were in remission.
Roche UK challenged Porter Novelli to highlight the importance of the Disease Activity Score (DAS) as a tool for RA patients to monitor their disease progression, and to empower RA patients in the UK to take back control of their disease and manage it proactively.
Given that RA affects almost three times as many women as men, and often starts between the working ages of 35-45, we knew that mobile and digital were key channels for this demographic. In partnership with NRAS, we developed the ‘Know your DAS’ app and launched it to rheumatology experts at the British Society of Rheumatology (BSR) congress. Digital and social activities also ran targeting RA patients specifically.
The launch campaign has resulted in over 3,400 downloads of the ‘Know your DAS’ app to date - and feedback from RA patients has confirmed a shift to more proactive disease management.
Judges’ comments
The Know your DAS app targets a genuine need and its launch campaign clearly identified, and then delivered on, a common goal. To achieve this the team showed how they engaged successfully with patients as well as organisations to support an app that achieved uptake.
