Medidata and AI Take Center Stage at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

The 42nd annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference (JPM) showcased Medidata’s groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence (AI)—a central theme that emerged during the three-day gathering in San Francisco.

From investors and large biopharma and contract research organizations, to early-stage biotechs, attendees were focused on AI’s transformative potential in drug discovery and clinical trial design and how it can reduce healthcare costs and provide better outcomes for patients.

Medidata Stewards the Clinical Trial Process

The ongoing conversation around AI set the stage for Medidata’s central role at STAT News’ summit, “STAT@JPM: What’s Next in Biotech?” Kicked off by Jacob Aptekar, Vice President, Trial Design Solutions Lead at Medidata AI, the event featured notable life sciences executives, reporters, and regulators, including Peter Marks, Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. In his introductory remarks, Jacob emphasized how Medidata acts as a steward of the clinical trial journey—using industry-leading, cloud-based technologies to collect data that leads to the discovery and development of life-changing treatments.

The session also covered how AI is being integrated into the life sciences ecosystem, streamlining the data collection process and promoting operational efficiencies—from wearable devices and sensors, to doctors’ visits, and electronic health records. AI is improving every aspect of the industry, including clinical trial design, patient enrollment, detection of adverse events, and patient safety. 

Harnessing AI’s Potential

In a panel discussion on the future of clinical development, Jacob and Afrah Shafquat, Senior Data Scientist II at Medidata, delved into AI’s potential to generate high-quality, synthetic clinical data that captures insights that aren’t possible solely with patient data. Medidata’s award-winning solution, Simulants, leverages Medidata’s industry-leading, historical clinical trial data set from 30,000+ clinical trials and 9 million+ patients to generate high-quality, synthetic clinical trial data that preserves insights and patterns while furthering patient and sponsor privacy. This synthetic data helps sponsors design and run clinical trials that are more likely to succeed by identifying key patterns such as adverse events, selecting optimal endpoints, comparing new options to the current standard of care, and choosing the desired patient populations for analysis.

While AI-focused technology can make a significant impact across a wide range of disease states and treatments, the CAR-T space is one area where AI can deliver immense value. There’s been increasing conversation about the side effects and adverse events for patients treated with CAR-T therapies. And there’s a lack of available clinical data for sites to evaluate if these adverse events are a one-off phenomenon or statistically significant. The Medidata Research Alliance, powered by AI, addresses this challenge by bringing together leading clinician-researchers and key opinion leaders from academia, non-profit organizations, and the life sciences industry and giving access to aggregated data sets—including a CAR-T-specific data set that can evaluate clinically impactful hypotheses and conduct research that provides tangible improvements in patient care.

Life Sciences Industry Invests in AI

JPM also saw several biopharma leaders publicly committing to investing in AI by partnering with technology companies to support drug development, data collection, and overall operational efficiency. A noteworthy development was the creation of a new, AI-focused nonprofit spearheaded by leaders from the Coalition for Health AI, including the Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, Google, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health. This organization will oversee a nationwide network of laboratories to test AI tools and determine their accuracy, validity, and susceptibility bias in hope of fostering greater adoption across the industry. 

Looking to the Future

The focus at JPM on AI’s potential to transform the life sciences and healthcare industries shows how this revolutionary technology is poised to support the entire clinical ecosystem, enabling better data collection, driving operational efficiency, and ultimately leading to improved healthcare outcomes—one patient at a time.

See how Medidata is at the forefront of this journey, driving innovation and shaping the future of AI.