The Honorary Award to Tore K. Kvien: Has made a significant difference for clinical trials in Norway

Minister of Health and Care Services Jan Christian Vestre had the honour of surprising Tore K. Kvien with the honorary award when he opened the event at which prizes were presented in six categories recognising outstanding contributions to clinical trials. The six awards and their nominees had been announced in advance, while the honorary award itself came as a surprise to everyone except the jury and the organising committee.

Kvien received the award for having made a significant difference to clinical trials in Norway, both academic and industry-initiated, and for contributing to making Norway an attractive country for high-quality clinical trials. The recipient of the honorary award himself was both surprised and delighted.

“I was very surprised and very pleased! I had no prior knowledge of this at all. I was here because we had three nominations from the rheumatology community at Diakonhjemmet Hospital, and as a senior I was asked to attend on that occasion. I have actually employed some of the nominees,” Kvien said when we spoke to him immediately after the award ceremony.

Kvien served as Head of the Department of Rheumatology at Diakonhjemmet Hospital for 25 years and has painstakingly built up a multidisciplinary research group. According to the jury’s citation, this research group has contributed to new insights and improved treatment for a large patient population both in Norway and internationally through large national observational studies and randomised clinical trials.

Kvien has also been extensively involved in international collaboration, both with fellow researchers and with the international pharmaceutical industry. In 2018, he was awarded the prestigious Carol Nachman Medal for his contributions to the field of rheumatology, and in 2019 he was appointed Knight, First Class, of the Order of St Olav. For a ten-year period, he also served as Editor of Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, which during this time developed into the world’s leading journal for rheumatology research.

The jury further notes that Kvien has distinguished himself through decades of strong commitment, actively contributing to the design of clinical trial protocols, securing funding from both public and private sponsors, and involving Norwegian and local partners from the pharmaceutical industry and the CRO sector in this work. The research environment established in the former Forstanderboligen at the hospital (also known as the “researcher villa”) has served as an inspiration for a wide professional community in both academia and research-oriented companies.

What do you think of the statements from the jury and the Minister of Health?

“I very much appreciated the Minister of Health’s introduction, which focused on the need to invest even more in clinical research, and on the importance of integrating clinical research into routine clinical practice, diagnostics and treatment. This has been a guiding principle for me throughout my time as Head of Department, as clinical research is, after all, also a statutory responsibility,” says Kvien.

Even though he is retired, he continues to contribute actively to research at REMEDY, a research centre that aims to conduct clinical trials with the potential to change clinical practice.

“I still hold a 35% position as a senior researcher at the REMEDY Centre at Diakonhjemmet Hospital, so I remain actively involved in research and participate in several international collaboration projects. I plan to continue doing so,” the professor says with a smile.

He is confident that the work he has invested over the years is in safe hands once he becomes fully retired.

“What has been important to me, and what I am particularly pleased about in connection with this award, is that I have succeeded in recruiting exceptionally talented people to the environment—people who have built on and further developed what I may have helped to initiate. Not only did we have three nominees here this evening, but we also have strong departmental and hospital leadership that has consistently prioritised research. I have worked with five managing directors at Diakonhjemmet since I started in 1986, and all of them have regarded research as essential to patient care and to the hospital as a whole. I am therefore completely confident that this will continue,” he says.

The article was translated from Norwegian using Optimizely auto-translation and ChatGPT, and edited by Ellen Johnsen.