For healthcare professionals
The Thea ‘Passionate about Preservative Free’ campaign is designed to encourage thought, discussion and sharing of best practice in ophthalmology eye care between March 20th 2021 and November 30th 2021.
Participants present clinical cases they were involved in and which demonstrate an improvement to a patient involving the change from preserved eye drops to preservative free eye drops.
Cases are submitted to a national selection board of ophthalmologists, which selects the 3 best presentations. 3 prizes of unrestricted educational grants of £1000 are available.
Registration and case study submissions are made online at www.thea-pharmacuticals.co.uk/preservative-free.
Candidates must be UK based registered healthcare professionals working in eye care.
A candidate can only submit one case.
The case report can involve one or several patients.
Submitted cases must be original (i.e. not previously published). The case can include presentations, diagnoses and/or management of ocular disease and must be related to the benefit of preservative free medications on the eye and the wider benefit to the patient.
A dedicated website will inform the candidates of the rules of the contest. Candidates have to register online and submit their case written in English on this website before November 30th, 2021.
The case must be submitted by the candidate who must be the author and should not be submitted by anyone else on their behalf. Co-authors can be declared however the grant will be attributed exclusively to the main author who submitted the case.
The author must declare any competing interests.
When submitting their presentation online, the candidate:
If there is any interest which might be considered prejudicial to the independence of a candidate, such conflict of interests should lead to the rejection of the candidate.
Subject to UK legislation or to any code of conduct regarding medical professionals in the UK, the candidate certifies that such regulation doesn’t prevent him/her from participating in the contest, in particular in consideration of his/her status as resident. Should UK regulations require that the candidate declares or asks prior approval for his/her participation in the contest, the candidate shall be responsible for such declaration and shall keep available to THEA the proof of such procedure.
Thea Pharmaceuticals shall comply with applicable UK law, regulation or code of conduct regarding the declaration to a medical council or any competent entity where the resident or fellow is registered and with the reporting and declaration to a public audience or a competent authority of any interests it may have with the resident or fellow.
The presentation should be written in English in Word format. Illustration of the case by pictures and imaging is recommended. A maximum of 10 pages is allowed. The clinical case should be divided into the following sections (in this order):
The full author's name, qualifications, institutional addresses, current position they hold at institutions or societies, or any other relevant background information and email addresses must not be included in the case presentation to ensure anonymous and impartial judging of the submission.
The presentation and appendix (image, figures, illustrations ,…) shall:
The selection of the best cases will be completed in the first week of December 2021.
Winners will be notified by email.
The national jury will have access to all clinical cases through the website.
Contestants will remain anonymous until the end of the contest. To ensure an independent and fair vote, initials will be allocated to each submission. These initials will be used throughout the entire process and will not be disclosed to the contestant nor the juries.
Thea Pharmaceuticals will not release any information that might help identify the contestants. Likewise, members of the juries will remain anonymous to the contestants.
The evaluation will be based on the following criteria to obtain a final mark out of one hundred:
The board shall select the winners in November 2021. The decision of the jury will be final and binding.
Winners will be informed by email before December 1st 2021.
November 30th, 2021 – deadline for submission of the cases November 2021 – selection of the best cases by national juries December 2021 - award of unrestricted educational grant
Cases of each winner will be published on the Thea UK website.
All best cases will be published in materials created and published by Thea and distributed at congresses, online via our website and may be used for other educational and promotional purposes.
Thea Pharmaceuticals reserves the right to use and reproduce the clinical cases with the pictures included and the name and photograph of participants in order to organize public relations activities.
For this purpose, by accepting the present terms and conditions, the Participant expressly and irrevocably grants to Thea Pharmaceuticals a royalty free, irrevocable and worldwide license to use all or parts of the intellectual property rights (writing, drawings and models, pictures, etc.) arisen from the establishment of the case report.
This license is granted for the legal duration of protection of the licensed rights as defined by the UK Passionate about Preservative Free 2021.
Intellectual Property Code.
The licensed rights pertaining to the case report includes notably:
whole or in part, on any known or unknown tangible supports, such as paper format or electronic format;
The participant declares to be the sole holder of the intellectual property rights on the contents of the elements of the case report and declares that the aforesaid the elements of the case report do not include any reproduction and/or adaptation of any work of the mind of third parties in whole or in part or more generally, any reproduction and/or adaptation of any right of third parties.
All personal data about the candidates will remains anonymous to the jury(ies) until the end of the contest.
Participants agree that personal data, especially name and address, may be processed, shared, and otherwise used by Thea Pharmaceuticals for the purposes and within the context of the Passionate about Preservative Free mission
and any other purposes outlined herein. The data may also be used by Thea Pharmaceuticals in order to verify the participant's identity, postal address, and telephone number or to otherwise verify the participant's eligibility to participate in the contest.
Participants have the right to access, review, rectify, cancel or delete any personal data held by Thea Pharmaceuticals by writing to Thea Pharmaceuticals Ltd IC5, Keele University Science & Innovation Park, Keele, Staffordshire IC5 5NT.
Thea Pharmaceuticals reserves the right to amend the articles of these rules, without notice, mainly to reflect changes in legislation, judicial decisions, new regulatory rules, and recommendations made by organizations responsible for the administration of the Internet.
Every modification will be announced on the Thea UK website.
The present rules are construed under UK law.
Any and all disputes arising from the interpretation of these rules shall be settled amicably. In case of persistent disagreement on their application, and the absence of agreement, any dispute shall be exclusively settled by the competent courts of the UK.
In the event that any provision of these rules shall be found to be unlawful, void or, for any reason, unenforceable, such provision shall be deemed severed from, and shall in no way affect the validity or enforceability of the remaining provisions.