An innovative healthcare start-up is re-evaluating how patients, recruiters and other healthcare organisations access clinical trials. Over 9 weeks, Brunel University London Design students designed a variety of concepts for Aurora Medical Innovations new clinical trials app.
It is hoped the new app, which will quickly match cancer patients to clinical trials tailored to their preferences, could reverse the high failure rate of cancer experimental trials in the UK, and give patients hope by helping to recruit them to most suitable clinical trials.
According to founder Dr Sola Adeleke “About 4% of patients in the UK end up being recruited to clinical trials, despite over 70% of patients saying they would like to be offered opportunity to be involved in a clinical trial”.
By using machine learning-driven algorithms, domain expertise and ability to combine cancer molecular profiling data, they hope the app will be a “match.com” for cancer patients.
Whilst patients are currently able to identify clinical trials, they rarely meet the patient’s specific needs and criteria, Sola’s new app will proactively attempt to generate a match even long after the initial search. The collaborative handover, hosted by Dr Vanja Garaj, Senior Lecturer in Design, saw three groups of students present their prototype app designs to Dr Sola Adeleke and the Aurora Medical Innovations team. Students Frederick Dai, Laura Botero Acevedo, Ruqaiya Kaderbhai and Shubhanjan Gurung were awarded an Amazon voucher for the winning presentation with the most innovative user interface (Remission) and the group represented by Contardo Aldwin Tjandra won the voucher for the best brand identity design (Mendy) All winning students are currently attending the MSc Digital Design and Branding programme at Brunel.
“The students shared some very insightful ideas and answered some difficult questions during the presentation. It’s been a very illuminating process collaborating with Brunel students, and we’ve picked up some great ideas going forward” Dr Sola Adeleke.
Organised through the Brunel Co-Innovate programme, providing support to London based small and medium sized enterprises and start-ups for new product, service and process innovation, the collaboration seeks to bridge the gap between academia and business.
“We take Brunel University London students to the cutting edge of their subjects through research-led teaching and experiential work-based learning in the form of collaborative projects with SMEs. Working with Aurora Medical Innovations has provided our students with just that”. Co-Innovate Innovation Director, Ian Ferris.
To find out more about Co-Innovate or if you are an SME interested in exploring research and innovation at Brunel University London, please get in touch via co-Innovate@brunel.ac.uk