Neuroute is a startup commercialising a software platform, of the same name, that aims to improve the efficiency and quality of clinical trial recruitment.

The platform reduces the time that researchers spend on participant recruitment while enabling participants to gain more insight about their own health.

The business combines a digital health platform with a trial management system.

Founder Livia Ng worked in commercial clinical development during her time at university and noticed researchers involved in various new therapies and medications faced similar challenges in terms of recruiting suitable clinical trial participants. This led her to engage with clinical trial coordinators and researchers, to validate the issues faced across translational and clinical research.

Dr Emily Ngan Luong at LSBU began working with Neuroute in April 2020 over the course of several months.

How has Neuroute benefitted from working with LSBU?

Collaboration resulted in an outstanding performance for the business, despite the unprecedented impact of Covid-19.

Numbers of website visitors and social media followers achieved a 200% increase. Client acquisition saw a 120% increase, while 2,500 participants enrolled for Covid-19 related research via the Neuroute platform. So far 56 research studies have been completed with 100% success rate.

Neuroute also secured a government grant from Innovate UK in the region of £300,000, which is being invested in the business to enable it to collaborate with three Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials on patient recruitment and management.

"This project is a great example of how a successful knowledge transfer partnership between academia and industry could hugely benefit all stakeholders involved."

Since the collaboration, which has resulted in rebranding the start-up and enhancing brand awareness on social media, Neuroute  has secured first place in the Covid-19 Recovery Challenge, competing against teams from Harvard, UCL, Imperial and ITSEM, engaged in 12 university  partnerships and has been accepted into Imperial Summer Accelerator and Pancea Stars (Oxford Science Park).

Emily said the cooperation with Neuroute has given her lots of insight into how a business in such a fast-growing industry can promote its product and service.

"It's great to be able to support the business and utilise my expertise in marketing which helped Neuroute  to clearly identify its unique selling point and the target market, to improve the business performance and so on."

Neuroute engaged with the university through the SimDH programme and the company was introduced to post graduate students during a seminar, titled Brand Management in an International Context.

The SimDH programme gave Livia and Neuroute the opportunity to participate in post graduate seminars, with LSBU students providing consultancy and analysis in areas such as marketing and branding of the company.

Do you have a health tech idea, prototype, or product that could benefit from:

• Consultation from industry insiders
• Validation from target users
• R&D support from academics and expert students?

Find out how SimDH can support you at Simdh.com.

Find out more about Neuroute via their website.