Systematic review of innovation design contests for health: spurring innovation and mass engagement

Abstract

We undertook a systematic review evaluating the effectiveness and cost of health-focused innovation design contests. We followed Cochrane guidance and systematically searched eight databases. Articles were included if they reported an open contest focused on improving health, required participants submit finished design solutions and contained a prize structure. We searched 3579 citations, identifying 29 health-focused innovation design contests which collectively received 15494 contest submissions. Contests solicited submissions worldwide (7) and exclusively from North America (13), Asia (4), Africa (2), Australia (2) and Europe (1). Submissions per contest ranged from 3 to 11354 (median of 73). Contest entrants were tasked with helping develop health promotion messages (HPM) (25) and improve predictive clinical models, protocols and/or algorithms (4). Two types of contests emerged—those focused on high-quality, innovative outcomes and those focused on the process of mass community engagement. All outcome-oriented contests had innovation design contest solutions equivalent or superior to the comparator (100%; 7/7). Two of two studies found that innovation design contests saved money (100%; 2/2). Five of seven process-oriented contests concluded the contest improved at least one health indicator (71%; 5/7). Innovation design contests are an effective way to solicit innovative solutions to health problems and spur mass community engagement.

Crowdsourcing in health and medical research: a systematic review

“…In comparison with previous systematic reviews [18,22], we included many more studies. This reflects the substantial growth in the field of crowdsourcing over the past several years.…”

“…This is a major gap in the literature that requires attention. One example of an effective use of crowdsourcing in an RCT design includes a recently completed largescale, eight-city study of crowdsourcing to promote HIV testing [18], which demonstrated the value of crowdsourcing for enhancing public health campaigns. This systematic review data can be used to refine and standardize crowdsourcing approaches for specific healthcare contexts.…”

“…Some crowdsourcing approaches focus on the process of mass community engagement, obtaining creative input from many individuals [13,14]. Other work has focused on the collective input of participants to generate a single, high-quality output such as clinical algorithms [15][16][17][18]. The crowd in crowdsourcing may be members of the general public [19] or individuals with specific clinical expertise [20].…”

“…Despite the growth of crowdsourcing in medical settings, few systematic reviews have focused on evaluating crowdsourcing research in medicine [18,22]. To date, existing reviews have been general [22], have largely ignored crowdsourcing in medicine [9,18], and have not incorporated the most recent literature [9,22]. A systematic analysis of the expanding medical literature on crowdsourcing is needed to understand optimal methods.…”

Crowdsourcing designathon: a new model for multisectoral collaboration

“…Crowdsourcing, allowing a group to solve a problem and then sharing the solution with the public, may help to improve public health programmes. Crowdsourcing can often take the form of participatory contests 2. Previous crowdsourcing contests have focused on producing individual components of communication programmes, such as videos,3 4 images5 6 or logos 7.…”