Research nurses who do clinical trial follow-up visits in patients' homes
TL;DR Visitwise sends trained research nurses to do a clinical trial's routine follow-up visits in the participant's home - blood draws, vitals, diaries and drug-return counts. CROs and trial sites pay per visit. The bet is simple enough. Fewer trips to hospital should mean fewer people dropping out.
A trial in India rarely fails for lack of willing patients at the first visit. It struggles later, when people have to keep coming back. In a survey of 73 Indian investigators, 16.7% named long travel distance as a common barrier, and a third named fear of side effects[1]. Phase III trials are mostly multicentre (90.7% of 1,385 registered on CTRI), and among India-only trials the share marked completed fell from 56.2% in 2007–2014 to 27.7% in 2015–2025[2].
Think about the participant who lives two hours from a teaching hospital and loses a day's wages per visit. That's the person most likely to quietly stop turning up.
What it does, in regulatory terms: delegated trial procedures under the site investigator's supervision. Visitwise nurses work on the site's delegation log and follow the approved protocol. They don't diagnose, change treatment or make eligibility decisions. Each study needs its ethics committee to approve home visits before they start.
A sponsor or CRO books Visitwise for the visits that don't need a doctor or a scanner - week-4 bloods, vitals, adverse-event questions, diary checks and pill counts. The nurse turns up with a cold box and calibrated kit, follows the visit checklist and couriers samples to the central lab within the protocol window, and the site investigator reviews the visit notes the same day. Screening, consent and any visit with imaging stay at the hospital.
The seed pitched a remote-monitoring platform with AI insights, and I've reframed it. Global vendors already sell decentralised-trial software and sponsors already buy it[3]. What India lacks is a trained, audited workforce to do the hands-on part outside the hospital, so that's what Visitwise sells.
The participant pays nothing and saves a trip. The payer is the CRO or sponsor, which already pays sites per completed visit and reimburses travel. Visitwise charges per home visit plus a study set-up fee. There's no published Indian price for this service, so working out the price is part of validation. Hospital trial units with heavy follow-up loads are a second buyer, since one nurse visit frees up a coordinator's whole afternoon.
From 1 April 2025, CROs working in India must register with CDSCO, which pushes them toward documented, auditable vendors[4]. Home visits are a normal trial element abroad now. In a 2024 multi-country survey, 48.4% of respondents using decentralised elements used home health visits[3]. The DPDP Rules, notified on 14 November 2025, set clear duties for handling participants' data[5].
There's no public figure for home-visit trial services in India. The firmer anchors - CTRI shows 120,027 registered trials to date[6], and a trade publication, citing Invest India, reports nearly 18,000 new studies registered in 2024[4].
The same article puts India's clinical trials market at US$2.05 billion in 2024 (about ₹19,800 Cr)[4]. That's an adjacent figure and it is the whole market, not yours.
A UK home-trial-nursing firm is the closest model, with mobile research nurses who run trial visits at home, school or work[7]. Decentralised-trial vendors sell software and eConsent but not people on the ground[8]. Large global CROs employ thousands in India[4], yet I found no Indian provider offering home trial visits as a standalone service. Home-nursing companies have the nurses but not the GCP training or the trial paperwork.
| Difficulty | Moderate (48/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹60 L–1.2 Cr |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The hard work here is quality and the tech barely matters. Every visit has to be audit-proof, with the right window, the right tube, the right temperature and signed notes. The hardest part is the first sponsor audit, because nobody books a new vendor without one. Sample logistics in smaller towns are the second hurdle.
Yes, in the sense that every visit you do sits inside a regulated trial. Most approvals belong to the sponsor and site, but you have to work within them.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
AI must not judge adverse events or eligibility. Those stay with the site investigator under the protocol, and the software only keeps the paperwork tidy.
Want to work out the AI layer for Visitwise? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I think this is a good fit for a founder from a CRO or hospital trial unit who knows GCP and has run site operations. If you see it as home nursing with a new label then it is not for you. Before you spend, prove that two CROs will write home visits into one live protocol each and pay a rate that covers a nurse's time plus travel.
Plan for roughly ₹60 L–1.2 Cr, mostly GCP-trained nurses, equipment, cold chain and the months before a sponsor audit clears you.
The trial itself needs CDSCO permission, ethics approval and CTRI registration. You may also fall under CRO registration, so check with counsel, and you need DPDP terms with every sponsor.
Yes. Home-trial-nursing firms already do this in the UK. Each country has its own trial and nursing rules, so check them first.
The free Visitwise validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the trial-rules and data-protection checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for CROs and sites, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Visitwise or something close to it? The make-or-break step is passing a first sponsor audit with a nurse team nobody has heard of, and I've helped founders prepare for exactly that kind of test. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.