AWS Pioneers Project

Mother and son spoke to a patient navigator, who discussed their diagnosis, treatment history, and personal preferences.

AI matched their medical profiles with potential treatments in trial stage, identifying 12 possible routes.

“This was a hugely powerful moment—going from zero potential options in a standard course of treatment to potentially 12 opportunities to participate in clinical research,” says Michel van Harten, CEO of the scale-up.

“Even if the options are few, knowing what they are and having clarity allows patients to feel empowered to make an informed decision that is best for them or for their loved ones,” he adds.

 

Bridging the gap

The company was born out of frustration. When founder Dr. Ronald Brus’ father was diagnosed with lung cancer, he wanted to access a specific drug to help with his treatment. As the CEO of a biotech company, he felt he would know how to go about getting it.

“It was a lot more difficult than he expected. And he thought, ‘if I can’t get access to this, what about all the others who are looking for something?’” explains van Harten.

Sadly, Brus’ father passed away before he could access treatment, and the stats suggest he is not alone.

“We estimate that there are about 300 million people in the world who are looking for treatments and about 10,000 treatments that are looking for patients,” says van Harten.

“We are bridging that gap.”

The health tech company runs a platform where doctors and patients globally can discover and request access to treatments that are not yet approved.

So far, it has matched 17,700 patients and onboarded 3,000 doctors in 135 countries.

The treatments available are either in clinical trials or part of what is known as an expanded access program, which allows patients with serious or life-threatening conditions access to an investigational drug outside of a clinical trial when no other satisfactory options are available.

The process is simple. A doctor fills in a deidentifiable medical profile of their patient, and AI matches that to relevant options. If something comes up that the patient and doctor wants to pursue, they can request access to the treatment. Patients can search for clinical trials themselves, although it's always recommended they consult their doctor first.

“There is a program we are running for a pharmaceutical company where very young children who have a complication following stem cell transplant can access a particular drug,” explains van Harten.

So far, a couple of hundred patients in Europe have benefitted from it. Meanwhile, the pharma firm, based in the US, has access to the data, offering crucial learnings as they get the drug fit for wider markets.

AI is a hugely important component of what the firm does with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

“As we are dealing with health data, our Large Language Models need to be hosted in Europe according to GDPR, and AWS has been instrumental in having the AI models deployed within the EU at a scale that we require,” says van Harten.

Using AI “saves around 90% of the time in the process of matching a patient’s medical profile to clinical trials,” says van Harten.

“What would take a medical professional two hours, takes a minute using AI,” he adds.

In the near future, the company plans to integrate AI agents for tasks such as plotting out the regulatory pathway for getting a particular drug to a patient.

The other main benefit of the collaboration with AWS is the infrastructure that underpins everything the firm does.

“We are using AWS cloud infrastructure to ensure reliability, scalability, and performance.”

The company has big ambitions for further expansion in new markets including the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia.

“We want to scale, and we need someone we trust that can scale with us, and that is AWS,” says van Harten.

Ultimately, myTomorrows is becoming the ‘go-to’ platform for connecting patients with pre-approval treatments.

“Wherever and whenever there is a patient out of options, they should think about us. And we should make it possible to provide access to these treatments within a few clicks,” says van Harten.

More generally, he sees AI playing a crucial role in healthcare, taking on the boring admin tasks and freeing up doctors to devote more time to patient care.

“AI can help save time for patients who might not have a lot of time, and it can help that patient get access to a treatment that he or she might not have had otherwise.”