Austin: AstraZeneca has partnered with Oracle to use artificial intelligence (AI) and real-world healthcare data to improve clinical research, identify eligible patients for trials, and monitor potential safety risks.
The collaboration will combine AstraZeneca’s drug development expertise with Oracle’s AI technology and healthcare data capabilities to improve patient matching and support clinical research.
Initial work will focus on cancer, cardiovascular, respiratory, immunology, and rare diseases, with the technology also offering potential to support earlier diagnosis of serious conditions. The first project will focus on hypertension research in Abu Dhabi, in partnership with UAE-based healthcare company M42.
Patient recruitment remains a major challenge for clinical trials, as delays in enrolling participants can extend research timelines and increase development costs. By using AI and real-world data to identify eligible candidates, the companies aim to address these barriers and improve the efficiency of clinical studies.
AstraZeneca Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot stated that the partnership brings together expertise in healthcare and AI to accelerate the journey from medicine discovery to patient care.
The CEO added that combining the pharmaceutical company’s scientific capabilities with Oracle’s data and technology expertise could help clinicians identify patients earlier, optimise clinical trials and generate evidence throughout a medicine’s lifecycle.
Anne-Claire Gerbaldi, Chief Digital, Data and AI Officer at AstraZeneca, noted that AI could help connect insights from scientific research, clinical trials and everyday healthcare to improve innovation and patient outcomes.
Gerbaldi highlighted the challenges faced by patients who receive late diagnoses or experience lengthy journeys to access appropriate care. The collaboration aims to support more efficient clinical trials, strengthen safety monitoring, and help patients receive earlier diagnoses and suitable treatments.
Mike Sicilia, chief executive officer, Oracle, remarked that, “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.”
Trial design has also posed challenges for AstraZeneca in the past, with setbacks involving a breast cancer drug and a treatment for a nerve disorder highlighting the difficulties of developing medicines and meeting clinical trial objectives.
The partnership comes as AstraZeneca seeks to expand its medicine portfolio and achieve annual revenue of more than $80 billion by 2030. The company is working to address broader industry challenges in drug development, including lengthy research processes and difficulties in identifying suitable trial participants.
The collaboration reflects growing efforts to apply AI and healthcare data to clinical research, with the aim of improving trial efficiency, strengthening patient safety and accelerating the development of new treatments.
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