CtrlTrial: Right Patient, Right Trial, Right Now!
Business Description / Company Background:
CtrlTrial Inc. is a startup healthcare analytics company providing software solutions for cohort identification in patient management and clinical research. The first product is an automated clinical decision support system for researchers to make screening decisions in clinical trial patient recruitment. The founder, Guannan Gong, got the initial idea back in 2015 when he was leading the software development of clinical trial patient recruitment in Epic. CtrlTrial started in January 2020 as a Yale School of Management class project, and later incorporated in October 2020 as a Connecticut S-Corp.
Market Opportunity / Unmet Need:
Clinical trials are the cornerstones for developing new treatments and additional uses of current medications. Patient Recruitment is essential across all phases. The US spends $1.8B per year on patient recruitment for clinical trials, yet nearly 90% of clinical trials fail to meet enrollment timelines. [1–4] Current patient recruitment processes require manual pre-screening processes that are time-consuming, error-prone, and subject to human bias. Clinical investigators and research staff need a more efficient, accurate and equitable way to match the right patients to the right trials.
Products / Services — Launched & Pipeline:
Our first product is an automated clinical trial patient matching (CTPM) system that analyzes clinical trial eligibility and medical information from patients’ electronic health records (EHR) to deliver clinical trial screening decision support to providers and research coordinators. CtrlTrial also provides consulting services to better streamline clinical trial patient recruitment process. To bring more values to our customers including research hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, CtrlTrial will include more automated software services covering broader clinical trial workflow, such as study design, study startup, patient data capture and analytics, and more into our pipeline.
Commercial / Technical Milestones:
Achieved: CtrlTrial started as class project (Q1 2020); Incorporated (Q4 2020); Started 1st pilot study on identification of clinical trial candidates using openly dataset (Q2 2020); 1st pilot study completion (Q4 2020); 2nd pilot study (retrospective identification of candidates for one GI Oncology trials within Yale Smilow cancer center) starts (Q1 2021); 2nd pilot study completion (Q2 2021); 3rd pilot study — prospective identification of trial candidates for one GI Oncology trials within Yale (Q2 2021); 3rd pilot study completion (Q3 2021); IP filing (Q4 2021); Sales starts (Q1 2022)
Competition / Competitive Advantages / Customer Benefits:
The annual global market is around $5.6 billion for patient recruitment, and $1.8 billion for the US. [1–2] The market is currently fragmented without significant share claimed, some stakeholders include IBM Watson CTM, Medidata, Deep6.AI, Mendel, TriNetX and Clinerion. While most of the stakeholders either provide CTPM services using historical claim data or without specialization in clinical trial patient recruitment area, CtrlTrial is focused on providing state-of-art software solutions around clinical trial patient recruitment to providers and research staff in research hospitals. Specifically, our CTPM seamlessly integrate into the current patient recruitment workflow analyzing real-time patient data and could be scalable to cover different disease areas at multiple sites. With scientific approval, deep understanding of the clinical workflow, light-weighted software, low overhead implementation, and strong team with tens of years industrial and clinical research experience, CtrlTrial can provide better, cheaper and more efficient solutions to the customers.
References:
[1] Patient Recruitment and Retention Services Market, 2019–2030, Roots Analysis, February, 2019. Available at: https://www.marketresearch.com/Roots-Analysis-Pvt-Ltd-v3981/Patient-Recruitment-Retention-Services-12370596/ [Accessed July 13, 2021]
[2] Parexel (2019). Decentralized clinical trials: Are we ready to make the leap? | BioPharma Dive. Available at: https://www.biopharmadive.com/spons/decentralized-clinical-trials-are-we-ready-to-make-the-leap/546591/ [Accessed May 6, 2021].
[3] Home — ClinicalTrials.gov. Available at https://clinicaltrials.gov/
[4] Clinical trial delays: America’s patient recruitment dilemma — Clinical Trials Arena. Available at: https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/analysis/featureclinical-trial-patient-recruitment/
To learn more about CtrlTrial, please visit ctrltrial.com or contact us at info@ctrltrial.com.
