COVID-19 has underscored the import work of medical researchers decoding diseases and produce lifesaving treatments. It can’t happen without human test subjects willing to try new treatments before they’re administered to the public. High Enroll, a Cincinnati-based startup, helps clinical researchers find the right subjects for their studies to get lifesaving products to market faster than ever.
Missed Opportunities
Until recently matching scientists with research subjects has been a costly hit-and-miss process.
- About 40% of any clinical trial budget is spent on recruitment.
- An estimated 80% of clinical trials do not meet enrollment deadlines.
- About 37% of research sites fail to meet enrollment goals.
- More than 10% of research sites do not enroll a single patient.
- Delays in blockbuster drug launches result in an average loss of $8 million per day.
Healthcare providers are enthusiastic supporters of research and are in an ideal position to identify qualified patients, but often they are unaware of available studies and enrollment procedures. In a 2021 survey, healthcare and pharmaceutical industry professionals were asked what life science sector process could most benefit from digitalization. Pre-clinical and clinical trials ranked at the top of the list.[1]
Ginger Conway, MSN and one of the founders of High Enroll, comments, “When I first started my career back in the late 1990s, we informed people about studies by putting posters on the walls . . . [thirty years later], we were still putting posters on walls.” Ginger realized “there has to be a better way to get the information out, to get it in the hands of the people who are actually seeing patients every single day.”[2]
High Enroll co-founders Dr. Dylan Steen and Dr. Sarma Singam believed the solution would be an online database that could make recruitment more systematic and effective. Dr. Steen believed this was the number one problem in medical research, so it was worth the effort to find a solution.
From Idea to Solution
Dr. Steen admits, “it is very difficult for three full-time healthcare providers to start a company. They are all busy. They know the problem but trying to get it launched is difficult.” It took a full four years of false starts before they got the right team members in place and worked through various prototypes before finding one that worked for them.
The company scored a coup in 2020 by hiring Matt Vorst as Chief Technology Officer. Vorst was co-founder of Dotloop, one of Cincinnati’s most successful startups, which sold to Zillow Group in 2015 for $108 million. Vorst was able to solve High Enroll’s technology piece, which Dr. Steen describes as “an inflection point” that solved “our biggest pain point.” [3] The result was a user-friendly platform that enables providers and institutions to connect quickly with research participants for studies in any area of health or medicine.
The company’s official launch at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in August 2020 turned out to be timely. Although many research studies paused during this time, public interest in participating in research studies surged. One of High Enroll’s competitors, Antidote, noticed a 43% increase in registration rates for clinical research trials.[4]
High Enroll offers their platform with no upfront investment from participating institutions, making them a zero-risk prospect for customers. They now enjoy significant partnerships with multiple branches of the University of Cincinnati medical system and St. Elizabeth Healthcare. High Enroll is set to reach 10,000 users this year. For now it has a regional footprint but intends to grow its reach nationally and internationally, as the problem it addresses is a global one.
Advice for Startups
What advice does Dr. Steen have for other enterprising startups?
1. Trust yourself. “Don’t be too cautious. We limited our vision to the University of Cincinnati at first when we should have been thinking bigger.”
2. Talk to entrepreneurs. “Anyone can come up with 10,000 ideas of why something won’t work. Entrepreneurs will come up with 10,000 variants you can try.”
3. Don’t talk only to entrepreneurs. “They tend to speak from their own experience rather than a broader research-based perspective. The business world is full of hocus pocus. A lot of what they say is completely wrong.”
4. Spend money on expertise. “We went to the biggest law firm in town and paid a huge retainer, but got our company’s structure laid out in an hour, rather than wasting months figuring it out for ourselves.”
5. Deliver what you promise. “If you develop a reputation for consistently executing, showing up, being professional, people will start to believe in you, and you will start to attract the best people for your company.”
6. Luck comes from hard work. “People wonder whether business success comes from luck or hard work. We’ve noticed that if you work hard, you seem to get awfully lucky!”
Learn more about High Enroll at https://www.highenroll.org/
[1] Clinical trial process would be improved with digital transformation, say 35% of healthcare professionals, according to a GlobalData survey. GlobalData. (2021, December 15). Retrieved March 16, 2022, from https://www.globaldata.com/clinical-trial-process-improved-digital-transformation-say-35-healthcare-professionals-according-globaldata-survey/
[2] Engel, L. (2021, July 15). UC practitioners, Dotloop co-founder among team launching new ‘high-growth’ health care app. Bizjournals.com. Retrieved March 16, 2022, from https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/inno/stories/news/2021/07/15/high-enroll-cincinnatis-next-big-thing.html
[3] Engel, L. (2021, July 15). UC practitioners, Dotloop co-founder among team launching new ‘high-growth’ health care app. Bizjournals.com. Retrieved March 16, 2022, from https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/inno/stories/news/2021/07/15/high-enroll-cincinnatis-next-big-thing.html
[4] Kantor, E. (n.d.). 25+ useful clinical trial recruitment statistics for better results. Clinical Trial Patient Recruitment. Retrieved March 16, 2022, from https://www.antidote.me/blog/25-useful-clinical-trial-recruitment-statistics-for-better-results#:~:text=Clinical%20trials%20account%20for%20nearly,vary%20from%20year%20to%20year.
