Clinical Trials for Rare Diseases

In a video interview prior to the 2026 DPHARM conference, Andrea Valente, CEO of uMotif, shares what she expects to be at the center of the conversation—from building trust between patients and sites to where AI may and may not have a role in that relationship.

A platform-based approach connects AI across workflows, data and governance, helping life sciences organizations move from isolated wins to real scale.

In today's ACT Brief, we examine what genuine patient voice requires beyond buzzwords, why AI's next bottleneck is system integration not models, and how regulators across three jurisdictions are formalizing patient input requirements.

The clinical research industry talks about patient-centeredness constantly but embeds it too late, too narrowly, and without clear ownership, and the cost shows up in enrollment failures, protocol deviations, and outcomes that don't reflect what patients actually care about.

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

In today's ACT Brief, we examine FDA's expedited pathway for first-in-human trials, why operating model design matters more than sourcing strategy, and how early readiness signals predict trial risk.

The pilot pairs drug sponsors with qualified research institutions to compress the path from drug identification to first-in-human study through rolling submission review and earlier coordination of institutional review board and site activation activities.

A Syneos Health-announced study from Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development finds no single sourcing model consistently outperforms others, pointing instead to vendor coordination, governance, and fit-for-purpose design as the real performance drivers.