AI accelerates evidence-based clinical decisions

PapersHive is one of UU Invest’s 55 portfolio companies. With an AI-based search technology, the company collects information from all medical databases in one place. This saves both time and money for pharmaceutical companies, CROs and medical technology companies. With a steadily growing customer base, they have embarked on a growth journey with the hope of building a new global deep-tech company.

PapersHive was founded in 2022 by the trio Matteo Ghetti, Anna Nilsson and Stergios Efes, after two years of intensive development. All three IT engineers from Uppsala University and with a great interest in search engines technology. The company’s business concept is to collect all data from the medical databases, such as PubMed, PMC, Clinical Trials Registries, Pre-prints and Patents, and make them searchable in one platform. Customers can search, analyze and understand in a visual way millions of validated data points.

“In our case studies, we have proved that it is possible to reduce manual work by 76%, and achieve a 501% ROI”

 

– This saves both time and money. In our case studies, we have proved that it is possible to reduce manual work by 76%, and achieve a 501% ROI. According to an Elsevier study, pharmaceutical and medical technology companies invest €130,000 per screening activity when looking for scientific evidence. 44% of these activities are canceled prematurely or have incomplete results, thus €57,000 are spent unnecessarily. And with data growing at 54% year-over-year, these numbers are most likely to increase significantly. We can change that, says Matteo Ghetti.

 

Pharmaceutical startup with the goal of expanding to large companies

In a short time they achieved a small, but dedicated customer base. The users are pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, CROs and in biotech. The goal is to expand to larger companies next year.

– It is most difficult at the beginning, as we are not yet a known player in the market. But we noticed that is becoming easier after every customers. Trust spreads as more people know about us and our product. We work hard with marketing and sales to create awareness, iterate on trust and gain new customers, says Matteo Ghetti.

 

PapersHive receives support from UU Invest, among others, to grow globally

The markets they want to enter are Europe, the USA and Japan. The team might expand soon once the new phase is reached. Therefore, they have invested a lot of time in finding a sustainable business model for growth and to be able to scale up. In this, they have received a lot of help and support from the entire innovation support system in Uppsala, not least from UU Invest.

 

”During the first year, UU Invest hired us to verify that our business idea was viable”

 

– During the first year, UU Invest hired us to verify that our business idea was viable, before we started the company. UU Invest is a co-owner of UIC and PapersHive also participates in UIC’s growth program, UIC Accelerator, where, among other things, they received their own business coach with practical experience of launches and global growth.

 

– The business coach Francesco Mazzotta has been a great help and means a lot to us, not least now that we are entering the next phase. A challenge for all growth companies is to stay one step ahead and make the right choices. But that’s also what’s alluring, says Matteo and says that the best thing he knows is solving problems. So life as an entrepreneur is an obvious choice. He would never opt out.