In today’s ACT Brief, we examine who decides what trials measure, how designing for human thinking improves site execution, and how the FDA extended an immunotherapy to a new bladder cancer population.
News|Podcasts|October 19, 2026
ACT Brief: AI Operating Models, Oncology Evidence Trust, and Thyroid Eye Disease Approval
Author(s)Andy Studna, Senior Editor
In today’s ACT Brief, we examine how AI is moving into continuous clinical operating models, how trust is built into oncology real-world evidence, and how the FDA approved a self-administered option for thyroid eye disease.
This is the Applied Clinical Trials Brief—your fast track to the latest insights shaping clinical operations and drug development.
- In a
new video interview , Rajneesh Patil of Syneos Health argues that the real operational value of AI comes from shifting narrow tools into a continuous learning clinical operating system. He says the bottleneck is the lag between signal and action rather than a lack of data, and warns that governance often fails when it is treated as a one-time approval. - In a
new Q&A , Saamir Pasha and Carole Berini, PhD, of Ontada discuss what it takes to turn fragmented oncology data into reliable real-world evidence. They also explain how routine lab markers can stand in for missing health status data, helping researchers recover a more complete picture of hard-to-reach patients. - The FDA
approved Enspryng for adults with thyroid eye disease , making it the first treatment patients can give themselves at home. The approval is mixed, since one of two pivotal trials missed its main goal. In the trial that succeeded, 52.9% of patients with active disease showed reduced eye bulging, compared with 23.4% on placebo.
That’s all for today’s ACT Brief. Join us next time for more updates shaping clinical operations and drug development. Thanks for listening.
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