The National Institute for Health Research hold an annual competition, called Let’s Get Digital, to “recognise those people involved in NIHR research using video, photography, websites, infographics and online communities to promote research”.
I was encouraged to enter BashTheBug back in June 2017 and was pleased to see in August that we had been shortlisted in the Online Community category with four other projects. This in itself was an achievement since 165 projects had entered. There was then a public vote and BashTheBug won!
Since the Citizen Science project launched on the Zooniverse platform in April 2017, i.e. just five months ago, over 6,300 people have signed up and, between them, have classified over 350,000 images of M. tuberculosis growing on 14 different antibiotics at a range of dosages.
Expert judge Verity Cardenas, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Programme Manager at Google, said:
“I really like the active engagement of users on the website with a step by step understanding of what is required of a volunteer. This gives me a feel for what it is like to be involved in clinical research”.
For more information about the prize, please see the press releases on the NIHR and the Oxford BRC websites. To find out more about BashTheBug in general head over to its blog, Twitter feed or Zooniverse project page.
