ACT Brief: AI-Driven Pharmacovigilance, Site-Led Digital Investments, and Smarter Multi-Touch Recruitment

This is the Applied Clinical Trials Brief—your fast track to the latest insights in clinical research operations. In under three minutes, we’ll recap top stories, highlight expert perspectives, and keep you current on what’s moving the industry.

• A new feature article details how AI-enabled automation is moving firmly into routine pharmacovigilance operations. Sponsors are now using AI-supported intake, triage, and case processing to handle rising safety case volumes and reduce manual inefficiencies—while preserving expert judgment for nuanced clinical decisions. The piece also highlights how functional service provider partners are becoming essential for scaling these technologies, helping sponsors integrate flexible, transparent, and auditable AI workflows without adding heavy internal infrastructure.
• A new Tufts CSDD study shows that investigative sites have far more digital capability and experience than long assumed. Many sites have invested in their own validated tools—often integrated directly with electronic health records—to support remote monitoring, ePROs, telehealth visits, and decentralized workflows. But sponsors and CROs aren’t always aware of these existing site systems, contributing to the fragmentation and burden sites continue to face. The findings reinforce a key message for clinical operations leaders: site-driven digital infrastructure is real, mature, and should be better integrated into study planning.
• And in the final part of our video series with Trialbee, Christian Bullock discusses how teams measure ROI and platform effectiveness in multi-touch digital recruitment. He explains why emerging platforms such as TikTok, Reddit, Spotify, and Nextdoor must be evaluated within the context of the full recruitment funnel—not just last-touch conversions. Bullock emphasizes the importance of tracking engagement, understanding return visits, and continuously testing creative and audience segments to optimize performance while meeting compliance expectations.

That’s all for today’s ACT Brief. Join us tomorrow for more updates shaping clinical operations and drug development. Thanks for listening.