When a loved one is seriously ill, every hour of waiting matters. It is this deeply personal experience that drives Cori Clinical’s team to find better, faster ways to bring clinical trials to patients. We speak with CTO, Patricio Fernández Weisson and Dr Emma Ogburn, formerly Director of Operations at the University of Oxford’s Primary Care and Vaccine Collaborative Clinical Trials Unit and now Chief Clinical Officer at Cori Clinical. Together with CEO Jorn Janson Schoonhoven they work on the intelligence layer that accelerates clinical trials. Earlier this month Cori Clinical announced a $4 million seed round led by Breega.
Before founding Cori, you worked at AstraZeneca and Sanofi, so you saw from the inside how clinical trials run and where they stall. What was the moment you decided the problem was big enough to leave big pharma and build something of your own?
Patricio Fernández Weisson: It started before that, and it started with something personal. My father was diagnosed with a very serious illness, and when we went looking for treatments, the most promising one was about 10 years away, still working its way through clinical trials. That left a mark on me for many reasons, and one question stayed with me: why does it take so long for a treatment to reach the people who need it? It’s also what sparked my passion for life sciences.
Then, while I was at AstraZeneca, large language models arrived, and I quickly saw an opportunity to apply them to clinical trial start-up. Clinical trials run largely on unstructured data – protocols, guidelines, previous studies – information that never quite lines up. That is exactly where these models are strong. So I left AstraZeneca to work on the problem my father and so many other patients run into: how to speed up the process so that patients don’t have to wait as long for life-changing treatments.
I knew the problem and I could see the opportunity, but I didn’t know how to build a company. That’s when I reached out to Jorn. We had met at university, and he had gone on to work in venture capital. We talked through the problem and how we could improve the way clinical trials are run, and it was clear from the start that he was looking for something that genuinely motivated him, and that he cared about solving this. Emma joined a little later, and she is proof that trials can run much faster. She has done it before, with new approaches at the University of Oxford and later at Lindus Health.
What surprised you most about moving from big pharma to a start-up?
Patricio Fernández Weisson: The support we received. Leaving pharma to build a start-up is a bold move, and I expected some scepticism. Instead, we had a lot of encouragement from advisors and senior leaders with decades of industry experience, because they want to see this problem solved too.
The other big difference is agility. In a start-up you can pick up a tool and see results quickly. What pharma gave me, though, was a respect for detail in clinical development. Small things matter, there are nuances everywhere, and rigour isn’t optional.
At Cori we combine the two: start-up speed with the rigour I learned at AstraZeneca and Sanofi. That matters a great deal to organisations looking for a partner they can trust. You have to take care of security, good practice and certifications, and if you come from outside the industry, you may have to learn that the hard way.
Cori is a young company, yet you’re already working with some major organisations. How did you earn their trust?
Patricio Fernández Weisson: I’d narrow it down to three things. First, you have to show that you understand the problem deeply, because it is full of detail and nuance. That’s why Cori is built by excellent engineers working alongside clinical operations people who have run trials for many years. Second, you have to take security seriously, and prove it. We hold our certifications, and good practice is built into the product in a way that shows. This industry runs on trust and safety. Third, you have to show that you’re useful. Once you understand the problem and have your security in place, you need to demonstrate that your solution actually solves it. With those three things in place, you’ll get your opportunity.
Emma, you’ve spent more than two decades in clinical trials and built a strong track record in the UK. What made you decide to join a start-up and, in many ways, start from scratch?
Dr. Emma Ogburn: I’ve worked in clinical trials for more than 20 years, on national and international studies, and throughout that time I’ve pushed the boundaries and thought about how to make things better for patients. That’s a big motivator for me.
The obvious appeal of a start-up is that you have room to innovate and push.
When I spoke to Jorn and Patricio some time ago, I could see that the technology they were building was really powerful and could help a lot of patients. That was a huge attraction. Meeting the team and seeing that everyone is aligned and believes in the mission was a major factor too. Coming to Cori was about being somewhere we could build differently, so that trials could run differently. There’s a real gap in the market for that.
In your experience, what is the main reason trials get delayed?
Dr. Emma Ogburn: Trials are very process-driven and document-heavy, and every document goes through so many rounds of review that the whole process slows down. Silos form between teams and between the subject-matter experts who need to make decisions, or disagree on key issues, or simply take their time.
A lot of the work becomes trying to align teams that don’t agree. In all that time, the technology used in trials hasn’t really changed. Everyone who works in the field finds it frustrating. Everyone wants to do the best for patients; the hard part is working out how. That’s where Cori comes in: shortening timelines and giving teams what they need to move forward.
AI has become a buzzword, and many companies attach it to their products in the hope of attracting funding. How much of what’s labelled AI today is genuinely effective, and how much is simply a label for the investor pitch?
Patricio Fernández Weisson: I understand where the question comes from. AI is being used as a buzzword across many industries, and I’ve seen products that worked perfectly well before and now have an AI component added, sometimes simply because it’s fashionable.
In other cases it’s genuinely transformational.
In our case, LLMs earn their place because they address a very specific problem: working with heavily unstructured data and reconciling data schemas that are usually very messy.
Used for what they’re genuinely good at, LLMs do far more than answer questions in a chat window. They help you reconcile information, bring it together and analyse unstructured data. That’s how we use them at Cori, with guardrails and tooling built around them. The fit is a good one, and as the models improve, our product improves with them.
Dr. Emma Ogburn: I’d add that AI has to work with the workflow an organisation already uses and genuinely enable the team. It can’t simply sit on top. It has to integrate with how teams work, so that it removes the silos and handoffs that hold up data and decisions. That’s where we’re seeing traction: we know how these teams work and what will genuinely help them.
Cori’s message is that behind every delayed trial is a patient who is waiting. Is that what drives you?
Patricio Fernández Weisson: For me, it’s personal. Last year my mother was treated for cancer with a therapy that wasn’t standard of care and hadn’t been available until recently. With a disease like cancer, a few months’ delay in reaching a new treatment can mean the disease spreads and the window of opportunity closes. I’m happy to say my mother made a full recovery. It shows how important clinical trials are, and how many people are waiting for these treatments. My mother was lucky: the treatment arrived in time. That isn’t the case for every patient, and that’s what keeps us going and keeps us focused.
Emma, what about you?
Dr. Emma Ogburn: I’ve seen it both personally and professionally. My dad had bladder cancer and was in the right place at the right time to get onto a trial, which gave him an additional five years of life. Other people at the same stage of their usual care were too late, and they missed it. That’s a huge driver for me.
Very early in my career, I worked on first-in-human oncology trials, and we were based in the clinic. Patients came in daily for blood transfusions just to keep going, and to be eligible they needed a life expectancy of six months. Any delay on our side could mean they missed the trial. Seeing those patients face to face drove the whole team to keep pushing.
So many people know someone who could benefit from a trial. It doesn’t have to be cancer; there are trials for many drugs and interventions that people are waiting for. My fifteen-year-old nephew was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes six years ago, and he’s counting on a trial that will help him have a normal quality of life. A lot of people relate to this. There are people waiting, and we have to keep pushing to get these treatments out there.
Many of the companies behind breakthroughs in health seem to start from personal experience. Do you think that personal connection is part of what makes them succeed?
Dr. Emma Ogburn: Definitely. For people who’ve been involved in trials for a long time, it becomes personal. Many of the founders I know say exactly the same.
What advice would you give to founders starting a health tech or health innovation company in Europe today?
Patricio Fernández Weisson: This is a very good moment to innovate. Healthcare technology has long been dominated by incumbents, but this new wave of technology lets start-ups look at old problems differently and try to solve them. My advice would be that now is the time to tackle long-standing problems in a new way.
At this stage, do you see yourselves more as scientists or as entrepreneurs?
Patricio Fernández Weisson: My area of expertise is AI. I’m still very curious: I keep testing things, studying them, trying to understand them deeply and put them into practice, so the scientist in me is very active. Running a company, though, demands other skills and a different kind of effort. It’s hard to say which I am more at the moment. Probably both.
Dr. Emma Ogburn: My foundation is science. That’s what my degree and my PhD are in, and everything I do is science-backed. Translating that into business is rewarding, because you keep the curiosity and keep pushing.
We often hear that scientists find it hard to leave the laboratory mindset behind when they move into the commercial side. Do you ever find yourself moving too cautiously, or over-analysing as you might in the lab?
Dr. Emma Ogburn: For me, it doesn’t hold me back. It comes down to what motivates you. If you know people are waiting, you don’t delay. You make evidence-based choices and you push, but you also know when to slow down. That comes from running trials: there are moments to push and moments not to. It’s still a start-up mentality – be agile, move quickly and get things out the door.
Finally, where do you see Cori in the years ahead? Do you plan to stay independent, or do you have an exit strategy in mind?
Patricio Fernández Weisson: We didn’t build the company with the idea of building something for a few years and then looking for an exit. That was never the plan. We see Cori being used across most of the large organisations in the industry, from research centres to CROs and big pharma. We know a platform like Cori can really help people, and, as Emma says, we want to push it forward. We’re focused on bringing the platform to more trials.
Dr. Emma Ogburn: The aim is for everyone running a trial to use Cori. That’s where we want to be.
