User:Bunyk/sandbox

ProofPilot is an American internet company with offices in New York, and Lviv Ukraine, that maintains a research platform allowing users to design, manage, launch and participate in randomized controlled trials and longitudinal outcome studies. The software as a service product is most focused on making research techniques used by academics and pharma available to organizations that have never run research studies before like social service agencies, non-profits, doctors, and digital health companies among others at much lower costs. . ProofPilot wants to support studies not just on solutions to existing problems, but also on things that prevent and optimize.

In May 2014, ProofPilot raised $1.85 million in venture funding lead by CueBall Capital. Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. Famed healthcare investor Esther Dyson also participated in the round.

History
ProofPilot grew out of the consulting firm Cyclogram in 2013. ProofPilot founder, Matthew Amsden, started Cyclogram in 2005. In interviews he describes how his background in HIV prevention research helped give the ProofPilot an opportunity to learn from a tech early adopter audience (gay at highest risk for HIV tend to be tech early adopters) well before the wider population was as comfortable online.

Early versions of the platform supported studies in the United States, Brazil and Peru.

Amsden has been open about the challenges of creating a digital health startup and the ongoing cultural disconnect between buyers and VC-backed startups. He says that the typical venture-backed startup rule book almost killed ProofPilot. During a period of inflection, the company pulled back and really focused on a self-service, scalable product as opposed to signing on new customers.

He credits a temporary move to Lviv, Ukraine to be closer to the development staff during this period and to escape the constant digital health spinning for saving the company.

The company relaunched the product in 2016 after not taking on customers for nearly 18 months in an effort to do things right - not fast.

Model
The ProofPilot platform is in three parts. The first gives users the ability to design research studies. The design process (and resulting participant experience) is based on a concept called micro-interactions. Non-experienced study designers can use study templates and fill in the blanks to create a study. The second is the participant experience. Study designers launch the study, it goes through an automatic external regulatory review by Veritas IRB in Montreal, Quebec Canada. Then participants begin engaging in the study. Via mobile phones and desktop computers. ProofPilot has publically stated it has deprioritized development of a native iOS and Andriod application because Progressive web apps provide a better user experience. The system also provides reporting of findings.

Studies
Among its customers are HiccCup and its initiative The Way to Wellville — a 5-year national challenge across five communities to make significant and lasting improvements in five measures of health and economic vitality, according to its website. The communities include Clatsop County, Oregon; Greater Muskegon, Michigan; Lake County, California; Niagara Falls, New York; and Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Regulatory and Ethics Review
In September 2016, ProofPilot formed a partnership with Veritas IRB in Montreal Quebec, Canada. Given that many of it's customers are not academic institutions and don't have an inhouse review process, all studies launched on ProofPilot will be reviewed by Veritas before going live.