Built by someone who's spent a career on who gets left out.
Unwritten Health is a UK patient experience data company: patient experience data and patient recruitment, UK. It was founded by Ashish Rishi. He spent nearly ten years running a clinical trial recruitment business, which he sold in 2024. He sits on the scientific advisory board of IHI READI, a Horizon Europe project on representative clinical research.
My story
Most people know me as the founder of a patient recruitment company here in the UK. I built it to reach the communities clinical trials usually miss, long before it became fashionable. I've spent my career inside healthcare agencies, across research and development, brand launches, market access, medical affairs and commercial strategy. I've seen what works, what doesn't, and who gets left behind.
Why I keep going runs deeper than work. I'm the son of immigrants. My dad came to the UK in the early 70s and my mum in the late 70s. They had an arranged marriage; the first time she saw him was their wedding day. They didn't have much, but they had grit. My mum worked in factories, making ice cream and testing vinyl records, before moving into a clerical job. My dad became a TV engineer. He always said he'd had the choice between TVs and computers, and he thought TVs were the future. They worked twelve-hour shifts, overtime and weekends, and skipped holidays, so I could have a better shot than they had.
That hard work came at a cost. My dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer at 52. My mum was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 48. Both too young, and both let down by the system. My dad knew something was wrong and pushed for answers for over a year. By the time anyone listened, it was terminal.
I was 17, sitting in a hospital room, when the consultant told me and my mum he had six months to live. He handed us a leaflet and said we'd get a follow-up. No pathway, no options. We had family and friends, but no advocates. We didn't know what questions to ask. We didn't know what we didn't know.
My dad held on for six more years. He knew he wouldn't see me marry, so he wanted to see me graduate. He died six months before I did, and that will always sit heavy with me. My mum didn't spot her own cancer and didn't know how to ask for help. She just kept going, like so many working-class people do, until her body made her stop.
That's why I do this. Not because I read a regulation, and not because someone hired me to, but because I've lived what happens when people are unseen, unheard and uncared for. Every keynote, every campaign, every late night has been about representation. I've built things, burnt out and rebuilt. I'm still here, and I'm still building.
Ash. Son of immigrants. Built from graft, fuelled by grief, powered by purpose.
If this connects with you, I'd love to hear your story too.
How we started
We started as a patient experience company. We built it to hear from people about living with their condition, their care and clinical trials. That's why we count a member only once they've finished onboarding, and why we know which postcode district they live in and whether they'd consider a clinical trial. Recruitment grew out of that, because buyers asked for the people as well as their views.
Patients we know, not patients we find.
It's the idea the business hangs on: we never take from patients and walk away. We build long-term relationships with the same people, and that's what makes our data stronger. They tell us more, they answer again, and the ones referred into clinical trials already know us.
What we believe
Anything developed for a patient should be shaped by patients before it goes out, and the people shaping it should look like the people who'll use it. Not a handful of people, however good. Not whoever signed up. Enough people, chosen to reflect who has the condition, to show who said what.
The name
Most of what's made for patients is written without them. That's the unwritten part.