AstraZeneca is working with Oracle to investigate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and real-world data to help identify eligible patients for clinical trials. The two companies also plan to accelerate evidence generation, and bring relevant research insights into everyday care using Oracle’s health data, cloud, AI, analytics and clinical workflow capabilities.
Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca CEO, described the collaboration as “unique”. “Combining AstraZeneca’s world-class science with Oracle’s deep data and technology expertise, we can help clinicians identify patients sooner, optimise clinical trials, and generate evidence continuously across the lifecycle of a medicine,” he said.
Anne-Claire Gerbaldi, chief digital, data and AI Officer at AstraZeneca, said the use of AI to improve clinical trials is the next evolution of medicine. “Too many patients are diagnosed late or face a long journey to get the care they need,” she said. “To build the next decade of medicine, we aim to harness AI to connect learnings across science, clinical trials and everyday care, generating insights that continuously strengthen research, accelerate innovation and enhance patient outcomes.”
Through a non-binding agreement, the companies plan to explore selected use cases that could improve clinical-trial efficiency and success by leveraging modern applications and AI to help care teams identify eligible patients earlier and easier, resulting in greater access to clinical trials for patients in need and helping to overcome one of the largest obstacles in clinical trials – patient recruitment. Disease areas the two companies are looking to explore include oncology; cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases; respiratory and immunology; and rare disease.
The collaboration is international and involves working with governments. Oracle and AstraZeneca plan to start with a focus on supporting hypertension care and clinical research in Abu Dhabi, in partnership with healthcare company M42. According to AstraZeneca, this will help clinical teams identify patients with uncontrolled hypertension; implementing guideline-directed care; and improving the recruitment for clinical trials.
“Some of the most important opportunities for AI are in healthcare, where better use of data can help turn scientific innovation into better outcomes for patients,” said Mike Sicilia, Oracle CEO.
“By bringing AstraZeneca’s scientific expertise together with Oracle’s data, cloud, AI and healthcare capabilities, we have an opportunity to help accelerate research, connect more patients to clinical trials, and ultimately bring relevant insights into care faster.”
The collaboration with Oracle comes just a few days after AstraZeneca announced it had entered into a new strategic drug discovery collaboration and licensing agreement with Insitro, an AI therapeutics company.
AstraZeneca said the collaboration will see advanced AI systems being deployed to identify novel drug targets using Insitro’s Virtual Human AI platform. This brings together large-scale human and cellular data with AI-enabled target identification and medicine design, generating insights to inform the discovery of novel therapeutic candidates.
Sharon Barr, executive vice-president and head of BioPharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca, said: “We know that disease biology is incredibly complex, and one of the most critical decisions in R&D is selecting the right target. This strategic collaboration underscores our commitment to maximising the potential of cutting-edge AI to tackle the root cause of disease. Partnering with Insitro, we will use advanced AI to identify the biological drivers of disease to support the rapid discovery of high-quality novel targets, advancing our ambition to deliver the next generation of medicines to patients faster.”
