Raj and Eric met at UPMC Enterprises, the venture captial arm of the health system, where they discovered firsthand the power of conversational AI to both form relationships with patients and drive healthcare operations for medication adherence. After seeing their adherence solution quickly adopted by 15 hospitals, they left UPMC and started looking at clinical trials for a family member. 

In clinical research, Raj and Eric noticed the dire problem of low participation and retention. They saw that operational problems in clinical studies stymied promising medical innovations like digital therapeutics or personalized medicine and they decided to do something about it. 

They interviewed hundreds of world-class research teams across the United States to discuss this problem. They discovered the solution to increasing participation and retention was shockingly simple: more personalized one-on-one conversations. One world-class investigator they now work with said it best, “Clinical studies start with conversations.” That’s where the premise of Root was born – an AI virtual assistant who has interactive human-like conversations with participants to guide them through their clinical study journey and automate clinical operations.