Happy Sunday!
Welcome back to Founders Feature, a weekly newsletter all about the journeys of young startup founders.
For this week's edition, I interviewed Livia Ng, Founder of Neucruit, a clinical trial recruitment tool based in the UK.
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Here’s what Neucruit is all about:
🏠 The Basics
The Problem:
It takes on average 12 years to develop a new medication, and a lot of this time is attributed to delays in patient recruitment to clinical trials. Over 86% of clinical trials are delayed by 6 months or more for this reason. This not only impacts the lives of patients who are waiting for life-saving medication, but it also costs the healthcare industry over 500 billion USD per year.
The Solution:
Neucruit uses AI to accelerate clinical trial recruitment, by using Natural Language Processing to build hospital site external patient registries.
The Team:
I'm the sole founder and CEO of Neucruit, and I have a really strong team of six at the moment, with incredible experience and background in various fields.
🚀 The Journey
How did you come up with your startup/solution?
I worked in phantom limb pain research as well as one of the first 8 employees at a biotech firm that recently had its IPO. During this time, I supported clinical development, where I experienced inefficiencies in the clinical trial process and particularly, in patient recruitment. With a background in neural computation, I set out on a journey to make clinical research more efficient with AI, and that's how I started working on Neucruit.
Why is this the right time for this problem to be solved?
Now is the best time for Neucruit for 3 reasons:
COVID-19 transformed technological adoption in healthcare. Pre-COVID-19, there was still hesitation in the industry in switching from paper to electronic forms. This has changed drastically over the past year, and there has been a surge in the adoption of innovation.
R&D decisions are going to be made by millennial, data-driven decision-makers. Over the past 5 years, there has been a huge surge in biotech funding, with much of this funding going towards millennial founders. Emerging biotechs ran over 76% of clinical trials in 2020.
There has been significant regulatory movement towards increasing accessibility in clinical research with FDA releasing a 2020 guideline on improving diversity in clinical trials
There has also been a widespread change in sentiment towards clinical trials, through the rapid development of the COVID vaccine. People are now aware that it could and should take less time to develop new medications. This has helped to resolve the stigma surrounding clinical trials.
What is a recent success you are proud of?
I'm really proud of the Neucruit team. We have supported pivotal research through the pandemic and I am grateful for the culture and calibre of the people that I work with.
What is a recent challenge you have faced?
My priority really is our team and the people I'm working with, so a recent challenge I've faced is making sure everyone is doing well, keeping their mental health in check, and maintaining a good work-life balance. We've been working so hard, and I'm so grateful for the team, but it's important to keep self-care in mind. A big change I recently implemented in this regard is to remove all holiday and sick day limitations in everyone's contract and move to an entirely self-managed, trust-based relationship.
What do you wish you knew before you started and is there anything you would have done differently in hindsight?
There are so many things I wish I had known, but I’m glad that I made mistakes so that I could learn from them. If I had known the answers, I wouldn't have had to face the problems, solve them with logic, and think through the consequences of what happens after.
🧠 The Lessons
What is the best advice you have been given recently?
To be a pioneer is to be the tip of the spear. You have to break through an incredible amount of debris and break through barriers with incredible precision and bring the rest of the spear along with you.
What advice would you give to other young founders?
Everything is possible. You can do anything you set your mind to and there is nothing out of reach, as long as you spend the hours getting there. As long as you stay directed to your vision, you'll get there.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned so far?
When they work 8 I work 10, and over time that compounds and adds up to something. I've always worked harder, longer, and eventually smarter. Hard work compounds.
✨ The Inspiration
Who inspires you?
My former boss is so inspiring. She was a founder of a company called Compass Pathways, and she started this breakthrough company bringing a life-changing antidepressant to market because her son struggled a lot with depression and she was just so inspiring. She really pushed me and inspired me to do something different, to think laterally about the world, and to think smart in the way that I want to approach the world.
What book do you think everyone should read?
Long Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela