This article is part of a series profiling the founders aligned with our Inclusive Alpha® investment approach.

‍

Medical research is the cornerstone of healthcare and it impacts our daily lives more than we might realise. From antibiotics and painkillers, to wheelchairs and heart rate trackers, all of these medicines and devices have gone through clinical trials. But the system is broken. Despite the wave of digital disruption that’s crashed through the pharmaceutical industry in recent years, clinical trials still lag a long way behind.

From recruitment of participants to the post-trial analysis, every stage of a trial’s life cycle involves mountains of administrative work and data management, and almost everything is still done manually. This creates huge bottlenecks that are astronomically expensive.

81% of global trials lack adequate participant engagement and an average of 28,000 hours of human admin is wasted on each trial (eg. trial management, data management, patient management). This combination leads to lengthy delays which cost an average of £34 million per month, per trial. It also significantly contributes to high failure rates that are even more costly. 90% of drugs trialled fail to receive regulatory approval, with up to 50% due to efficiency issues and 40% directly linked to patients and planning. Ultimately this leaves patients waiting on life saving treatments and medical interventions, while research institutions have to return to the drawing board if there are funds to do so.

With this context it’s easy to understand why we think clinical trials are ripe for disruption and the London HQ’d startup, Research Grid, is leading the charge.

‍

The smart platform for clinical trials

Founded by Dr Amber Hill, Research Grid has built two industry-leading products that unblock these bottlenecks.

The first is Inclusive, which automates the workflows, data, and sourcing work in the pre-trial recruitment phase using artificial intelligence. In addition to automating lots of the admin involved, it makes it easy for medical research institutions to find, recruit, and retain trial participants from communities over the world. This is possible because Research Grid has built relationships with more than 74,000 community groups across 157 countries and more than 2,500 medical conditions, ultimately giving its partners access to more than 900 million potential participants.

I am yet to see a comparable product on the market today, which perhaps explains why a $375 billion multinational pharmaceuticals business has recently partnered with Research Grid to use its Inclusive platform. Demand looks set to keep growing too, as the FDA recently provided guidance that research institutions need to improve the diversity of their clinical trials. This is important to ensure new drugs are safe and effective for different social groups, but research institutions have found it difficult to reach and build trust with diverse communities.

EmVenio recently partnered with Research Grid and its Senior Director of Global Patient Engagement, Niambi Blodgett, highlighted the importance of Inclusive in helping to solve this problem. “Building relationships in clinical research across multiple communities, cultures and demographics is complex and requires flexibility. Inclusive considers each variable, carefully simplifying the process that gives our community building toolbox depth and heart.”

The second product is R.Grid, a smart clinical trial management system (CTMS) that handles the workflow, data, and reporting of trial management work required to run a secure, compliant, and effective trial. It uses machine-learning and process automation to dramatically streamline a number of the manual processes. For example, the company has developed a ‘smart protocol builder’ using a patented algorithm that automates the creation of clinical trial protocols, which is then used to generate all the additional documentation.

“Our machine-learning algorithms automate nearly everything,” Dr Hill says. “Things that took hours or days or months now take a matter of seconds.” The results speak for themselves: R.Grid customers experience a 45% reduction in admin costs, a 98% increase in efficiency, and 145% increase in patient engagement.

Another tailwind is the shift to decentralised trials (DCTs), which was accelerated rapidly by the pandemic and the FDA is keen to continue this momentum. DCTs are clinical trials conducted with remote participant engagement, using digital technologies to communicate and collect data outside of traditional clinical settings. According to a pre-pandemic survey, 38% of biopharmaceuticals and Clinical Research Organisations expected DCTs to be a major part of their research portfolios. By December 2020, those responses were at 100%. Consequently, many more research institutions are now looking for software that makes it easier to recruit and communicate with remote participants and collect and manage their data.

‍

Meet the founder

For Dr Hill, her drive to found Research Grid was borne of personal experience. Prior to starting the company, she was a medical research expert with a PhD in Biomedical Neuroscience from UCL. She saw first hand how inefficient everything was and knew there was a better way that would free researchers from tedious bureaucracy.

“It’s madness that we have some of the smartest people in the world wasting hundreds of hours on admin, filling in forms and tables.”

Dr Hill is also driven by a desire to tackle some of the inequalities present in the healthcare system today. “I want to bring more people into clinical trials. More women, greater age ranges, and more diverse groups in terms of race and ethnicity.”

What began as an idea to solve the administrative problems she and her colleagues faced is now helping to accelerate the development of innovative new treatments, potentially making a difference to the lives of millions of people. Her efforts are already being recognised; Dr Hill was named one of the 100 most influential women in engineering by the Financial Times.

‍

An exciting future

Ada Ventures led the £1.2m pre-seed round in the Research Grid in 2020. The company aligned with our vision for Inclusive Alpha® — the investment approach where an inclusive lens is prioritised in every part of the investment process in order to drive exceptional returns for our investors. Since our investment, the company has developed two profitable AI-powered B2B SaaS products less than a year after commercialising them.

With this foundation, Research Grid is ready to scale and world-renowned tech engineering bodies have taken note. The company has received backing from Google for Startups, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and angel investors who work at Google Deepmind. This also reflects the large and expanding market opportunity. The global clinical trials market is estimated to grow from $58 billion in 2023 to $92 billion by 2030. A significant portion of that growth is coming from DCTs, a market which was valued at approximately $7 billion in 2021, but is set to grow to $29 billion by 2031.

The company’s rapid progress is all the more remarkable when you consider how lean Research Grid’s team is. For a company of this size and stage to be winning major contracts with multinational pharmaceutical companies is a very strong signal. We can’t wait to see what they achieve with more firepower behind them.

‍