Artificial intelligence (AI) should soon be taking a greater role in areas including patient recruitment and in building efficiencies around data quality.

That is the hope among those attending this year’s Clinical Trials in Oncology (CTO) East Coast 2025 conference, taking place on 8-9 July in Boston.

During an interview with Clinical Trials Arena, Leena Gandhi, chief medical officer at NextPoint Therapeutics, believes that AI will have an increasing role on the operational side with regard to modifying trial protocols in responding to changes as a trial unfolds.

“I don't think AI will get us away from learning what actually happens in real people and being able to adjust on that basis,” Gandhi said. “We might be able to adjust faster, but we're still going to have to learn what happens in real people and then change our strategy accordingly.”

Ayat Alsaraby, senior manager of clinical biomarker operations at Repare Therapeutics, hopes to see more sponsors using AI to identify data weaknesses and ensure quality standards in research.

“AI can help us spot problems in the data we’re collecting and understand why we’re not getting the quality we need. By identifying these gaps, we can build better clinical studies, get approvals faster, and bring therapies to patients sooner,” Alsaraby concluded.

Julie Martin, CEO of Canadian contract research organisation (CRO) Scimega, told Clinical Trials Arena that she hopes AI will continue to help streamline the administrative tasks that those involved in clinical trials are burdened with.

“I especially hope that AI begins removing onerous tasks within the growing level of platforms we have to work with,” Martin said.

“In science and research, the intelligent people we work with can do a lot more than sort out emails. Therefore, I hope AI is going to add this extra layer of support so that skilled research professionals can save time to focus on what they do best.”