As highly specialised advances in clinical research have grown, so has the burden on clinicians, caregivers, and trial participants to meet the demands of the research behind them.

This era of customisation or a fit-for-purpose approach is defining the clinical trials industry today, says Ken Getz, a research professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine. Getz says this clinical trial customisation is rising as research focuses on increasingly complex diseases, and operational complexity involving a number of stakeholders in a clinical trial.

However, while studies become more customised, the burden on individual investigators and sites also continues to increase. “Despite high awareness of the burden that's introduced by this hyper customisation, we have yet to see any company that has consistently been able to apply approaches that optimise design and lower site burden,” says Getz.

At the same time, Getz expects the use of the artificial intelligence (AI) in clinical trials to help in saving time spent in routine tasks. “With the advent of generative and now agentic AI, there is a lot of excitement around ways that AI can make more decisions, obviously with human oversight, [and] make more decisions that will save time and drive efficiency, and so we're seeing so much promise in many  areas in drug development.”

In a few weeks, Ken will be a keynote speaker at the Outsourcing in Clinical Trials Conference New England, scheduled to take place 27 to 28 October in Boston, where he plans to show how global enrollment challenges are impacting this space based on data from his research.

In this episode of the GlobalData Media podcasts in Healthcare, Getz previews what his research at Tufts University says about the latest trends in the clinical trials space and how AI is expected to influence the way we do clinical research.

A detailed agenda for the 18th Annual Outsourcing in Clinical Trials New England 2026 conference can be accessed here. The conference is hosted by Arena International Events Group, a B2B events company owned by GlobalData, the parent company of Clinical Trials Arena and Pharmaceutical Technology.

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