By Mark Ambrogi
Tom Krohn led a small group at Eli Lilly Co., who started four years ago working on improving public information to accelerate medical innovation. The Lilly group conducted some proofs of concepts with fellow pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Novartis to help patients match with clinical trials.
Earlier this year when Lilly decided to sell the internet protocol to TrialReach.
“The first and foremost reason I joined TrialReach is helping patients,” Krohn said. “I believe in what we’re doing and I believe in helping patients who struggle finding what they need. I wanted to continue what we started. We have some really good capabilities that I wanted to see mature in the marketplace. Third was the ability to do this, be close to my home and do the same type of work I did at Lilly but be in the marketplace.”
TrialReach moved into Carmel’s Indiana Design Center second floor office earlier this year. Indiana Design Center recently announced the move waiting for official go-ahead from TrialReach. Krohn is the chief development officer for Trial Reach.
“The location is fantastic,” said Krohn, a Noblesville resident.
TrialReach was a small company of 20 people in January and is expected to grow to 50 by the end of the year. Krohn said it’s to be determined how many will work out of the Carmel office, but probably five to six.
“We trying to bring trials to the patients,” Krohn said. “We are free to patients and hospitals. The sponsors, such as Lilly, pay us to help the patients connect.”
Krohn said it could not run the program at Lilly because it had to have trials available from all studies, not just Lilly. So they needed to sell the IP to an independent neutral party.
“We knew TrialReach from the past,” Krohn said. “We chose them because of the fit between our expertise and their expertise. So Lilly sold the technology to TrialReach. So that ethnical platform is now owned by TrialReach. TrialReach is able to scale it to all studies and reach tens to hundreds to millions of patients because TrialReach’s model is about bringing trials to patients in the online communities or point of care in the hospital.”
TrialReach has offices in London and New York. Krohn chose to stay in Indiana.
“We are running the informatics (in the Carmel),” Krohn said. “My background is a pharmacist with a technical background so I’m the lead business developer.”
Krohn, 50, and his wife Melissa have three children, ages 11 to 16.
Krohn, who worked for Lilly for 13 years, was a health care missionary for 10 years, mostly in Madagascar.
“I met my wife there and our first child was born there,” Krohn said.
