Special Report: Opyl has announced that its clinical trial recruiting platform will go live on 20 May 2021, after completing major milestones.

AI-based digital health company Opyl (ASX:OPL) has successfully completed the first of a major milestone in the development of its clinical trial recruitment platform, with a clear pathway now for an official launch on 20 May 2021.

The March milestone confirmed the viability and matching algorithm of the platform, a critical element in the functionality of linking patients to relevant clinical trials.

Opyl’s AI based platform provides a free matching service for patients that want to participate in a clinical study. Patients and carers can identify trial and research opportunities anywhere in the world, in a disease or condition area they are most interested in.

If patients don’t match to a trial or research opportunity, they can still register their interest by having push notifications sent when a new clinical trial or research study becomes available that matches their self-selected filter.

Patients will also be able to participate in regular surveys on the platform, sharing their lived experience managing a disease, injury or disorder – a dataset that is increasingly sought after as patient experience is now being incorporated more and more into drug, device, diagnostic, clinical trial and treatment design.

Opyl says its main point of difference from competitor recruitment platforms is its in-house healthcare social media marketing expertise.  The Opyl team have more than four years of recruitment and optimization experience using social media, delivering recruitment and digital market intelligence for a range of biopharmaceutical, medtech and government clients already on their books.

The Opyl team also has wide professional networks within the global clinical trials and biopharma industry, which gives the company a head-start in attracting clients or up-selling existing clients into new services.

Maiden profit

Opyl  delivered a maiden profit in the last half, reporting $21,658 in profit in the six months to December 31, compared to a $843,233 loss in the same period in 2019 – whilst accelerating research and development expenditure in bringing the recruitment platform forward into an advanced stage of development.

Revenue from the social media insights team, who undertake digital market intelligence projects for biopharma and government clients, increased 109 per cent during the period. In addition, all of Opyl’s biopharma and medtech retainer clients have re-signed with Opyl for 2021, despite the company losing a third of them at the start of the pandemic.

With all that’s happening on the development front, the company’s recent placement for $1.38 million was oversubscribed.

“It’s been really pleasing to see the strong uptake and interest in the company during the capital raise as we near and achieve major milestones with both the development of novel platforms, continued growth of the company and development of our unique health market solutions”, said Opyl chairman Dr Julian Chick.

What’s next

The next milestones in the platform’s development pathway will include focus groups, and onboarding clients that are prepared to trial the platform.

The first of these five focus groups commenced on 8 April and will continue until the end of May.

Feedback from these sessions will be used by Opyl to refine features, the platform’s user experience, and will also be used to support its marketing and sales strategy.

The official launch of the platform will be on 20 May 2021, which is the International Clinical Trials Day. This will be followed up by a webinar on 24 May 2021 for shareholders, which will introduce the platform and demonstrate key features and functionality.

This article was developed in collaboration with Opyl, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.