Tran Le was an engineering student at Stanford University when she tried to enroll in a clinical trial for her chronic condition. Although she identified several promising trials, she found the sign-up process daunting — she had to exchange extensive emails with clinical sites and complete lengthy 20-page forms.
All the paperwork was so cumbersome, Le saw an opportunity to use generative AI to reduce the time it takes to enroll in a trial from weeks to minutes. Earlier this year, he co-founded Stanford Medicine with fellow engineer Sohit Gatiganti. Grove AI.
Although many patients are referred for clinical trials by their physicians, some people find suitable trials independently by searching websites. clinicaltrials.gov. These registries can help patients discover relevant clinical studies, but contacting trial administrators can be challenging and time-consuming. As with many things in healthcare, understaffing, bureaucracy and outdated systems get in the way.
Le and Gatiganti (pictured above) claim that Groves AI's agent, Grace, can resolve enrollment issues by calling patients as soon as they express interest in the trial.
Grace uses a voice-based AI agent to ask pre-screening questions to determine if a patient is eligible for testing. If they do, it may determine the first visit to the clinical site, where trial managers may make the final decision.
Since its inception eight months ago, Grove AI says it has interacted with 250,000 patients, scheduled 7,000 in-person appointments and landed two customers with multi-year contracts.
Grove AI can solve a straightforward problem, but according to Le and Gatiganti, no other company is using generative AI to help accelerate patient enrollment in trials. “A lot of players in this space are reaching out to us, and they're very interested in partnering with us,” Le said.
Investors also think there may be value in reducing the bureaucratic hurdles associated with clinical trial enrollment.
On Wednesday, Grove AI said it had raised $5.2 million in seed funding led by the venture firm a*With participation from Afore Capital, LifeX Ventures and Pear VC.
“The market they're going after is not the biggest market today, but I think it has room to grow,” said Gautam Gupta, co-founder and general partner at A*. He added that his firm believes that advances in AI and computational biology will lead to an explosion of drug research and clinical trials. “The Grove is going to be a big beneficiary,” he said.
Gupta admits that the tech powering Grove AI isn't very complex, but the fact that it's in demand by many companies, many of which have historically been slow to adopt new technologies, makes him excited about the company.
In addition to finding Grove AI's voice agent compelling, Gupta sees significant potential in the startup's efforts to collect and organize patient data into a relationship management tool.
Most clinical sites currently track patient interactions in spreadsheets, but Grove is using its AI to build a product that could eventually be used to manage patient records.
“I don't know how to quantify that opportunity right now, but I do know that it creates a pretty significant moat and will create incremental monetization opportunities over time,” he said.