Decentralized trial models have demonstrated real gains in enrollment performance and patient access, but operational switching costs, fragmented technology stacks, and unresolved gaps in the patient-site relationship raise a question the industry has been slow to confront directly.

In a video interview prior to the 2026 DPHARM conference, Andrea Valente, CEO of uMotif, explains why truly understanding the patient journey from beginning to end—and building that understanding into both study design and data collection tools—remains one of the industry's most important unfinished tasks.

Most AI pilots in drug development fail not from poor technology but from lack of strategic prioritization, organizational readiness, integrated data infrastructure, and disciplined governance, making success dependent on business discipline rather than technical capability.

Why clinical development’s next AI bottleneck is not the model, but the system around it.

Regulatory expectations for patient input in drug development have shifted from aspiration to documented methodology across three major jurisdictions.

This episode of The Human Side of Clinical Trials, hosted by Brian S. McGowan, PhD, FACEHP, chief learning officer and co-founder of ArcheMedX, Inc., and Kelly Ritch, chief operating officer of ArcheMedX, Inc., explores why training completion metrics like attendance and quiz scores fail to capture true study readiness, and how measuring both competence and confidence can reveal trial risks before enrollment even begins.

Clinical trials have spent decades perfecting data capture, but the execution layer underneath it, including decision workflows, data collection design, and lab connectivity, remains fragmented in ways that limit what AI can realistically deliver and that quietly compromise the scientific validity of the data itself.

In this video interview, Amélie Lothe, global medical community head for rare epilepsies at UCB Pharma, explains why the full burden of developmental and epileptic encephalopathies extends far beyond clinical symptoms—and why endpoints must reflect what families are actually hoping for.