Call To Explore

Inspiration

As a researcher, I spent around 80% of my study duration recruiting participants by flyers and other manually intensive methods. My frustrations were shared amongst many in the research community including my co-founder. Together, we decided to build a solution to this issue in academia while simultaneously exploring viable commercial applications of our platform in Pharma.

What it does

CT-X is a patient engagement platform that allows users to take part in experiments, collaborate and contribute to groundbreaking discoveries about their health. Data from these discoveries enable us to accurately identify suitable participants for a given research study with a paired trial management system. Our goal is to use our engaging and automated recruitment system to streamline COVID-19 research.

How we built it

Before

We interviewed over 200 patients, research professionals, and clinical trial coordinators to get an understanding of the solution we would need to build. We, then, began building our prototype in July 2019 using React, completing a usable version for both Android and iOS devices in October. From October, we began co-development of our matching trial management system with 6 research labs within UCL. In February 2020, we completed recruitment for 6 research studies with over 50 participants sourced, demonstrating market validation (TLR8).

This Weekend

Our current objective is to supply COVID-19 researchers with over 500 participants for their research. During the weekend, we built out the web version of our platform to help attract a larger audience. We also began pre-registering individuals for COVID-19 research and on-boarding COVID-19 researchers.

Challenges we ran into

Although the core functionality of our web platform has been built, the design is currently not optimal. We will likely need to go through several rounds of user interface testing before this version can be deployed. Thus, I have linked a prototype on our website that does not link to the back-end created this weekend.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• 160 pre-registrations for COVID-19 research during #EUvsVirus • 3 COVID-19 research studies on-boarded during #EUvsVirus • Recruitment for research labs at UCL, KCL, Royal Holloway, University of Hertfordshire and University of Oxford. • Successful recruitment for 6 academic research studies in Feb 2020. • 80% of our participants had never taken part in a research study before!

What we learned

We are extremely grateful to our mentors from #EUvsVIrus. What we have learned in these 48 hours would have normally taken us weeks (or more). Their insight has fast-tracked our strategic approaches to outreach, marketing, design, growth hacking and business development.

What's next for Call To Explore

We will continue our mission to expedite COVID-19 clinical research. To do this, we will need to expand our trial management system to support 500 participants for 1 single study. After successful recruitment of COVID-19 research studies, we will begin to deploy our system to larger clinical studies across several therapeutic indications, including mental health.