Amber Hill spent 14 years as a medical researcher. She didn't hate her job, but there was one thing she consistently hated. It was an administrative job.
“I think most people are like that, especially in the research field,” she told TechCrunch. She said she would rather analyze data and build relationships with patients. “But I was spending a lot of time doing manual tasks that didn't require medical expertise. It was a completely broken process, but I knew it could be fixed.”
So she did what any problem solver would do: In other words, I started a company.
Her startup, Research Grid, was founded in London in 2020. The company seeks to make clinical trials more efficient by automating administrative and data management workflows. We are proud to be the only software that can fully automate back-office trials.
Research Grid on Tuesday announced a $6.4 million seed round led by Fuel Ventures with participation from Ada Ventures and Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures Lab.
Research Grid consists of two patented products: Inclusive and Trial Engine. These products work together to handle tasks such as protocol error flagging, data extraction, and workflows. Currently, clinical trials use more manual processes supported by traditional software systems, which often result in costly delays during trials.
“They're built on old code bases, so it's almost impossible to innovate,” she said. “Our technology is already good. Eliminating the big players won't happen overnight, but it will happen. I don't see why we wouldn't do it.”
But there are other questions that Research Grid wants to address. Examples include faster clinical adoption and better handling of the pressures that often come from the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) regarding compliance. Recruiting can take months, she says, and “it requires manual management and is difficult to find.” When it comes to finding people who fit the narrow and exacting standards of research testing, it's also difficult to do consistently.
Currently, it's a very manual process that uses untargeted social ads and analyzes health records. “Without sufficient participation, researchers will not be able to understand whether a drug or intervention is safe and effective, and ultimately it will not be approved by regulators to reach the people who need it most.” It means.”
Additionally, the FDA is now mandating that clinical trials be more diverse, as women and people of color are often excluded from clinical trials. Hill said he sought to build customer relationship management capabilities at Research Grid, which has more than 80,000 groups representing nearly 2,000 medical conditions in 157 countries. “We use AI to go far beyond traditional people search methods,” she said. “This allows partners to find the person they need to look for in seconds instead of months.”
Hill was introduced to the lead investor by the EMEA team at venture firm Plug and Play, which was an early participant in the round. The company has previously raised $8 million in venture funding and will use this latest funding to further invest in research and development, strengthen its engineering team, and further expand into the US and Asian markets.
“The next challenge is primarily to set up the corporate infrastructure to seamlessly service these partners,” she said of expanding operations in the US, UK and Asia.
Like many great companies, this one was born out of setbacks, but Hill said he always had a passion for entrepreneurship. While studying for her PhD, she ran a nonprofit organization as a way to expand access to research. Running a business taught her how to be resilient and resourceful, and how to work with different types of people. “I kept a team of volunteers together for three years, even though I had no funds,” she recalled. “We painstakingly collected the money for ‘Old School’ in a bucket and took it to the bank.”
Her first technology idea was to use AI to automate all the tasks needed to run a nonprofit organization. “We were able to come full circle as we transformed that idea into a pre-trial product and meaningful IP,” she said. When she wanted to start Research Grid, she applied to an incubator program to help her transition from a “non-profit to for-profit mindset” and “from academic to entrepreneur.” She then enrolled in an accelerator program that put her in front of some of London's biggest investors. She raised her first million pounds. This is a feat in a country where black founders raise less than 2% of all venture capital. And as TechCrunch previously reported, only eight Black women raised more than $1 million in venture funding from 2019 to 2023.
The most difficult part for Hill was getting the company off the ground as a sole founder during the pandemic. She made it through and is now in growth mode. Revenue grew more than 20 times last year and is expected to continue to grow, she said. The company is working with leading pharmaceutical companies, contract research organizations, and clinical sites to hire more experts and improve its AI technology.
“AI is accelerating precision medicine, drug development operations, and transforming care pathways for everyone,” she said. “I'll stay here.”