Find My Trial wins Rep. Lisa McClain’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Michigan’s Ninth District

When asked what inspired the creation of Find My Trial, the students said, “Chronic diseases affect many people, often through friends or family. Our family went through this when our aunt received an ovarian cancer diagnosis three years ago. She tried all the usual treatments. Sadly, the cancer came back and didn’t respond as well this time around. This led us to look for clinical trials at different locations. Our family learned how tough this can be. Many say health care is flawed, disorganized, and costly. But just finding the right clinical trial meant going to different universities and talking to experts at various hospitals.

“Currently, locating the proper clinical trial means filling out numerous applications demanding extensive details. This process takes up a great deal of time and energy. We are not medically trained, but we witnessed what was going on with our aunt and could not help but wonder why this process has to be so exhausting. We questioned why no standardized system exists where patients can be evaluated for their eligibility for clinical trials with a fraction of the effort. Considering the number of people affected by the same problem, we were motivated to develop Find My Trial.

“Our goal is to make this process seamless, accessible to all, and centralized, so that different clinical trials across the world can be quickly filtered for each patient based on criteria and availability data. Unfortunately, only a small fraction of chronically ill patients are enrolled in clinical trials due to the lack of accessibility. The administrative responsibilities that come with participation can also be a burden for many people. We all realize that clinical trials are the only way to test what is being discovered and invented in laboratories, bringing research from the bench to the bedside. Clinical trials play a pivotal role in advancing medicine, and enhancing enrollment in these studies should be our priority as a nation and as a society. Doing so will help future generations all across the globe.”