In order to learn more about how Citruslabs can help you manage your clinical trials, we spoke with founder and CEO, Susanne Mitschke about her role and hopes for the future of clinical studies.
1. What does a typical day in your role at Citruslabs look like?
“There is no typical day. The role of a founder is very versatile and we have to do a lot of things and juggle many different things at the same time. For example, I am strategizing and think a lot about the long-term vision and mission of the company and how we can achieve that and also work operationally in sales as well as marketing. For example, I hop on sales calls, prepare proposals, source leads, create campaigns, work on messaging, and so on.”
2. Why did you want to be involved in Citruslabs, and in Clinical trials?
“Citruslabs was the natural evolution of MindMate (the company I initially founded with my two co-founders). MindMate is an app (still going strong) for baby boomers to help them reduce the risk of developing cognitive decline. From the early days, we helped pharmaceutical companies find patients to participate in their clinical trials. We found those patients in the MindMate app, and initially only recruited for memory loss related indications. As we grew the company and were able to recruit for indications beyond memory loss, we changed the name to Citruslabs that is reflecting the full capabilities of what we can do.”
3. What do you hope Citruslabs is able to provide people with?
“Citruslabs is a virtual CRO. As such, we deliver clinical trials in a smarter, faster, simpler, and more cost-efficient way to run clinical trials. Through this approach, we are streamlining clinical trials, and help biotech and pharmaceutical companies to get to market faster, which in return is helping patients to get access to often life-saving treatments faster.”
4. What is the most rewarding part of your job? The most challenging?
“Starting and scaling a company from scratch is very challenging and probably the hardest thing anybody can do. Nothing prepares you to be the CEO of a company, except, being a CEO of a company. The most rewarding part is happy customers and the ability to help bring new treatments to market that help millions of patients.”
5. Where do you hope to see Citruslabs go in the next 5 years?
“I hope we can take on many more clinical studies, and help to advance modern medicine through Citruslabs. Technology is moving super fast, but the healthcare industry was historically more traditional, and less "techy". Additionally, many technology solutions for healthcare look rather clunky and are not very user friendly. We want to change this with Citruslabs and offer clinical trials and research sites a better, faster, and simpler way to manage their trials and enroll more patients faster.”
6. What is one thing you wish people knew about clinical trials? (Especially during COVID-19.)
“Being part of a clinical trial is nothing to be scared of. The drugs or treatments that are being researched have been tested thoroughly before they go into human clinical trials. Unfortunately, many individuals believe that they are human guinea pigs when they take part in a clinical trial. This is not the case. In fact, clinical trial participants are real-life heroes who help to advance medicine and have the opportunity to help millions of people who are living with (chronic) health conditions, either by helping to find cures for these conditions or improving the quality of life through better treatment methods,” Susanne said, “Especially now with COVID, clinical studies are super important for getting back to the life we once knew, pre-COVID.”
Want to learn more about what Susanne and the team do?
Check out what our customers have to say about us here.
And If you’d like to know more about how Citruslabs can help you recruit more effectively, get in touch with our team here.
Citrus is a fully integrated recruitment and retention software that fits any clinical trial and simplifies the implementation of patient engagement in your clinical trial. Whether you are already working with CTMS systems or not, Citrus is the perfect add-on to make patient interaction effective.
Since 2015, our team has been hard at work raising awareness of clinical trials across the globe. A Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ company and a graduate of the renowned Techstar program in New York, Citruslabs is at the forefront of patient recruitment and retention technologies. With over 3 million patients now recorded on our databases, our patient recruitment dashboard is fast becoming the most efficient method of trial recruitment.
Now a #1 health app in 17 countries, our Mindmate app is helping to revolutionize the way we think about healthcare. Mindmate “[takes] senior care into the digital age” (Forbes, 2018) by providing people with cognitive decline the essential tools to help them rebuild and maintain strong mental health. Trusted by millions of users, our health community continues to grow as the content available expands to the needs of individuals today.
With more than 200 research sites now using the Citrus platform to screen thousands of patients every month, researchers are now well on their way to finding new treatments for hundreds of different health conditions - something that just would not be possible without a technological solution. Make sure that your clinical trial is in the lucky 12% and turn that luck into guaranteed results with Citrus.