When someone you love gets sick, one of the first things you do is search for options. I found myself doing exactly that when my father was facing a serious illness, and quickly discovered that finding clinical trials is a broken process: outdated interfaces, unreadable medical jargon, and thousands of irrelevant results. Years of manually helping patients navigate this maze led me to build TrialFinder, a free, non-profit platform that matches patients with relevant clinical trials: from smart profile-based search and plain-language explanations, through eligibility checks and guidance on speaking with your doctor, to contacting the trial team. This talk covers my journey: how I designed an AI system that handles sensitive medical data without ever storing it, the early viral moment that stress-tested everything, feedback from patients and doctors, and emerging partnerships with hospitals and health funds. This is a story about building a zero-budget tool with nothing but purpose.
Senior Director of Engineering at Lemonade