Writing about COVID-19 in a way that's digestible

When my fantastic friend and one of the best Project Managers (now business owner) I've ever worked with, Claire Mance, asked me to help turn a clinical studies paper into some PR for her client at Talk Creative, I gulped and said yes. Claire and I have worked on some tricky scientific/technical jobs before, such as AlphaImpactRx, and turning difficult scientific language into clear content had been a really rewarding challenge. 'Challenge' being a key word.

The task

A small New Zealand software company with a focus on clinical trials software had grown rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to their involvement in a very complex clinical trial to study effective treatments for COVID. They wanted a long-form piece, a blog post and a press release that explained why the clinical trial(s) had been so groundbreaking. In language that could be understood by everyone.

The process

After battling my way through the paper published about the trial, I went straight to the source, chatting to two Kiwi researchers and doctors who had set up the trial. Their interviews revealed fantastic human insights into why this was so important, and it boiled down to: people who signed up to their trial were more likely to receive an effective treatment than if they didn't. That mean real lives saved. I had my human angle.

But I also needed to understand what Spiral's platform did, why it was unprecedented, how the trial worked, and interpret that – and make it newsworthy. There were a number of ways to talk about it, and this is reflected in the three pieces that were about the same study, but placed emphasis on different angles. I will post all below, but here is the long piece on Medium:

COVID-19, the world's most complex clinical trial, and the small New Zealand company who made it possible.