AccelerateHERstory: How a Chance Zoom Connection Sparked a HealthTech Collaboration Set to Reshape Clinical Trials
When Lucie Legrandois and Hannah Amies joined the Barclays Eagle Labs Female Founder Accelerator powered by AccelerateHER, they didn’t expect to find a business partner. But a spark during a Zoom session led to something bigger. A strategic collaboration that’s now driving innovation across rehabilitation HealthTech, AI-driven trial design.
This is a story about what happens when you combine two ambitious founders, complementary missions, and a supportive ecosystem that enables women-led businesses to thrive. It’s a reminder that the most powerful outcome of a great accelerator isn’t just education, it’s connection.
Two Founders. Two Visions. One Goal.
Lucie Legrandois is the co-founder of Omnilabs Research, a HealthTech and design lab focused on building accessible, tech-enabled rehab tools. Her flagship product, Omnihuman, is a personalised tele-rehabilitation device designed to support stroke survivors through music therapy, robotics, and extended reality. The device also empowers clinicians to track recovery remotely, making care more personalised, efficient, and scalable.
Hannah Amies is the founder of Luvida, a data-driven platform that uses AI and real-world healthdata to design faster, more efficient clinical trials. By streamlining trial designand delivering predictive insights, Luvida helps researchers de-risk clinical studies and accelerate access to life-changing treatments.
At first glance, two very different products. But dig deeper, and a shared mission emerges: improving patient outcomes by transforming how healthcare technologies are developed, validated, and delivered.
The Moment It Clicked
Their collaboration didn’t come from a pitch deck or planned partnership. It started in the Zoom chat on the accelerator programme.
During a group session early in the accelerator, Lucie noticed Hannah’s work on clinical trial design. She was intrigued. Lucie had recently wrapped a clinical study and was preparing for Omnilabs’ first full clinical trial. She needed a more agile, tech-enabled way to design it. Hannah’s work seemed like a natural fit.
“I took notes on everyone during the cohort,” Lucie shares. “When Hannah mentioned clinical trials, I messaged her immediately. She didn’t see it. So I stalked her on LinkedIn and said, ‘Hi, I think we should talk!’”
As they got chatting, they realised they actually had a close friend in common, someone Lucie was working with, and one of Hannah’s best friends from school. “We might have even been at the same gig once,” Hannah laughs. “But we’d never crossed paths in a professional context.”
That mutual connection became a reassuring signal, an informal bit of due diligence that confirmed they’d likely work well together.
That message was perfectly timed. Hannah had just taken Luvida full-time, launched her commercial strategy, and started fundraising for her first investment round. Lucie’s project represented the kind of real-world application Luvida needed to validate their product for a new use case: medical devices.
“I didn’t expect to find potential partners in the programme. I thought it would purely be a learning opportunity,” Hannah says. “But Lucie joined the dots. Her trial timeline aligned with our product roadmap. It just made sense.”
From DMs to Letters of Intent
What followed was fast-paced but intentional. After several one-to-ones (and a nudge to their respective co-founders), they formalised the partnership with Letters of Intent, which set out clear agreements on how they’d work together and also served as proof of commercial traction for Hannah’s fundraising round.
Now, Omnilabs is soon to use Luvida’s platform to design its upcoming clinical trial, collecting critical data for product validation and future certification.
“Luvida gets real feedback and a case study in a new space. We get to design our trial faster and smarter,” Lucie explains. “And it’s a way for us to help shape a tool we genuinely need.”
For Luvida, this collaboration is both client engagement and an R&D moment. “We weren’t originally focused on medical devices,” Hannah says. “This lets us test whether the tool is clinically rigorous enough in that context. It’s a whole new vertical for us that might not have come about otherwise.”
Accelerating Each Other’s Growth
While the product benefits are clear, it’s the peer-to-peer value that has proven most meaningful. Both founders describe the experience of working together as energising and grounding, a rare safe space to speak honestly about the highs and lows of startup life and provide each other with support.
“It’s not just about the tech,” Hannah shares. “It’s about having someone in the same world, at a similar stage, who gets it. You can talk openly about the hard stuff without judgment. It’s validating.”
Lucie agrees: “Having someone who understands the founder experience, and who can give real-time feedback, made a huge difference. And we’re already introducing each other to people, sharing tips on branding, partners, even who built our websites.”
The collaboration has already contributed to Luvida’s fundraising successes, in part thanks to the traction the Omnilabs partnership represents.
Expectations Going In vs Reality
When they applied for the accelerator, both founders were focused on filling capability gaps, building momentum, and developing a future funding strategy, not on partnership.
Hannah joined while still working full-time and expected a structured learning experience that would help her build the business in the limited hours she could carve out each week. Around the same time, she was also accepted onto another VC-led accelerator programme in London.
“AccelerateHER helped me fast-track the fundamentals I didn’t even realise I was missing,” she says. “I was stepping into the CEO role for the first time, and it gave me grounding across all the moving parts of running a business.”
For Lucie, who had already completed Imperial College’s We Innovate programme and was enrolled in MedTech Super Connector with a small overlap, the expectation was different. She wanted exposure to operators who could help her accelerate business development in general, but also a space to pressure‑test early assumptions without slowing her engineering momentum.
“I thought it would be mostly frameworks, lectures, and expert advice,” she says. “I expected structure, accountability and introductions. What I didn’t anticipate was how quickly you start spotting alignment when you’re surrounded by so many people building in parallel.”
Both entered thinking they would extract value in a one‑directional way, from mentors and sessions. Instead, they found themselves building value in multiple directions: learning from ex‑founders, advising peers, sharing contacts, swapping insights on CEO leadership, and, ultimately, finding one another.
And it was this widening of possibility, rather than narrowing of focus, that set the stage for the partnership neither expected, but both were ready for when it arrived.
The Female Founder Accelerator as a Catalyst
Both founders credit the Barclays Eagle Labs Female Founder Accelerator, powered by AccelerateHER, as the spark that brought their businesses and visions together.
Lucie joined after completing Imperial College’s ‘We Innovate’ programme and was looking to level up her investor readiness. But she quickly realised the real power of AccelerateHER was the environment it created.
“It’s one of the only spaces I’ve been in where I felt truly safe. You’re not being talked over. There’s no ‘sharky’ energy. People actually listen and respect each other,” she says. “You gain confidence just by being around that energy.”
Hannah, who was also balancing two accelerators at once (including a high-pressure VC programme), felt the difference immediately.
“AccelerateHER was the safest, most empowering founder space I’ve been in. Amongst the day-to-day challenges and triumphs we were all feeling in our businesses at the time, entering the chat felt light, supportive, but still challenging in all the right ways. It helped me understand what it really means to be a CEO and Founder, not just a builder or operator.”
Advice to Future Founders
When asked what they’d say to a founder considering AccelerateHER’s programmes, both are unequivocal.
“There’s no reason not to apply,” Lucie says. “Even if you don’t have all the answers, just being in that environment will shape your next steps. You’ll be surprised at what emerges, we certainly were.”
Hannah adds, “If you’re early-stage or new to leadership, the ROI and the value you gain are massive. It gives you the foundations to lead, and connections that can accelerate everything.”
What’s Next?
Omnilabs and Luvida are now working towards their next major milestone: launching the clinical trial design phase in early 2026. They’re aligning timelines, syncing product readiness with trial recruitment, and deepening their collaboration.
The partnership is already shaping Luvida’s commercial roadmap and product development, and giving Omnilabs the agility and insight they need to move faster in a highly regulated space.
For both founders, this is just the beginning.
The Ripple Effect
Lucie and Hannah’s story is a powerful reminder that business growth isn’t always linear and sometimes it starts in the Zoom chat.
It’s also a testament to what happens when accelerators do more than teach — when they create the conditions for trust, ambition, and unexpected alignment.
This collaboration wasn’t planned. But it was exactly what both founders needed.
And in a world where female-led innovation is still underrepresented and underfunded, it’s proof that when women connect, collaborate, and co-create, the results can be transformational.
Are You Ready to Join the Next Cohort?
Applications for the next Barclays Female Founder Accelerator powered by AccelerateHER open in March 2026, but you can register your early interest now.
Whether you’re refining your pitch, raising your first round, or scaling your impact, this programme offers the tools, community, and unexpected connections that could shape your future.
Register your interest at accelerateher.co.uk.
And explore more stories like Lucie and Hannah’s at AccelerateHERstories.