Intelligent clinical trials: Using generative AI to fast-track therapeutic innovations

Stakeholders throughout life sciences have struggled for decades to bring new therapies to patients faster and at lower cost. Inefficiencies in clinical development are the primary obstacle, and despite sustained focus and investment from the healthcare industry, the problem has only intensified. Consider:

• It takes eight years on average for nononcology treatments to move through clinical development—and nearly 12 for oncology treatments.
• The average cost of bringing a new treatment to market exceeds $2.5 billion, while clinical trials account for roughly 40% of the total research budget for U.S. pharmaceutical companies.
• Despite the implementation of multiple strategies to lower the high rate of development failure, the success rate of clinical drug development sits between 10% and 15%.

This joint white paper from ZS and the World Economic Forum explores the opportunity for generative AI (gen AI) to dramatically shrink the time and cost of bringing new therapies to market. Based on interviews with more than a dozen clinical development leaders from across pharma, tech and nongovernmental organizations, this paper looks at how gen AI can enable new forms of trials, such as decentralized clinical trials, as well as improving new ones through integrating new data streams.

Explore the future of clinical development