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Connecting patients with clinical trials

Facilitating patient enrollment in clinical trials

Giving patients hope — and tools they can use to find a clinical trial that’s right for them.


Most people miss out on clinical trials

Less than 5% of U.S. adults with cancer participate in clinical trials. Among other barriers, one of the causes of recruitment difficulties is a lack of awareness about and accurate understanding of clinical trials. Patients have trouble finding information about clinical trials. 

Clinical trials often face delays

Clinical trials are often delayed, which lengthens the time until a medical innovation can come to market and patients can benefit. Delays impose a huge cost on drug sponsors, and each day’s delay can cost them up to $8 million. Patient recruitment is where most of the delays occur.

Sparrow Search expedites clinical trials

Sparrow Search addresses both of these problems. We provide a patient-friendly search engine that allows patients to directly search for and match to clinical trials. Patients who match to clinical trials are connected with clinical research sites, thereby increasing the pool of potential study candidates and expediting the recruitment process. 

The clinical trials market

There are tremendous market opportunities to improve the efficiency of clinical trials. The global clinical trials market was estimated at 49.4 USD billion in 2020, and is expected to reach USD 69.9 billion by 2027. The patient recruitment services market is expected to reach $5.3 billion by 2030.  

Sparrow Search

Why Sparrow?

The sparrow is one of the most common birds in North America. In spite of its small size, the bird symbolizes power. Through Sparrow Search, we give patients hope — and the tools they need to become utilitarian and resourceful in finding a clinical trial that is appropriate and meets their needs.

Teresa Gallagher

Teresa C. Gallagher

CEO & Co-Founder

Teresa C. Gallagher, PhD, MPSH, has a public health and clinical research background. She conducted research on access to and use of health services at Yale University, UCLA School of Medicine, Stanford University, and was a Professor of Community Health at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Recently, Gallagher founded the San Diego Clinical Research Network, Clinical Research Currents newsletter, and Sparrow Search, a clinical trial patient recruitment company.

Gallagher graduated with an A.B. from Stanford University; a Ph.D. in Education (Stanford University); Masters in Health Services (U.C.L.A. School of Public Health); and Professional Certificate in Clinical Trials Design & Management (University of California, San Diego).

David J. Kriegman

David J. Kriegman

CTO & Co-Founder

David J. Kriegman, Ph.D., is a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of California, San Diego and an accomplished researcher and entrepreneur. His core research is in computer vision and machine learning. Building on his patented computer vision research, Kriegman co-founded Photometria (aka TAAZ and Sight Commerce) and as CEO raised a Series A funding round; launched in seven months the initial B2C product taaz.com; drove engagement to a million monthly active users; and landed the first major B2B customers in media, brand and retail. The company’s photorealistic virtual makeover, hairstyle and color, and jewelry/accessory try-on were used by more than 100 million people on the web and mobile devices as well and in stores.

Kriegman also founded KBVT, which developed state-of-the-art face recognition for government customers. In 2014, Dropbox acquired KBVT. At Dropbox, Kriegman led a world-class machine learning team and managed the development and deployment of a portfolio of technologies including content understanding (including NLP), prediction on the Dropbox Machine Learning Platform, computer vision (image search, photodocument scanning) and search quality.

Kriegman’s papers have been cited over 45,000 times. He graduated with a B.S. from Princeton and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Computer Science.

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