ACT Brief: Community Sites Prove Readiness, Platformization Reshapes Clinical Ops, and AI Targets Precision Care at JPM

This is the Applied Clinical Trials Brief—your fast track to the latest insights shaping clinical operations and drug development.

• In part four of an Applied Clinical Trials interview, Liz Beatty, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Inato, said community research sites continue to face steep competition as sponsors rely on a small fraction of familiar sites to run most trials. Beatty noted that growing pipeline pressure at large academic centers is creating new opportunities, and said sites that can demonstrate readiness, performance, and verified patient access—supported by AI and technology—are best positioned to secure trials in 2026.
• In a new contributed 2026 predictions article from PA Consulting, authors forecast deeper disruption across clinical research as non-traditional players like telehealth providers, compounding pharmacies, and consumer health technologies gain influence. The article predicts platformization will move from theory to reality, with unified, end-to-end systems enabling living protocols, automated data capture, and hyper-personalized trial design, while AI fluency across talent, governance, and operations becomes a key differentiator for survival.
• At the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, Pharmaceutical Technology spoke with Medable CEO Michelle Longmire about how AI and machine learning are improving the use of patient data to guide therapy selection. Longmire said AI can help prioritize therapies for areas of greatest unmet need, support precision prescribing through richer patient-level data, and remove manual bottlenecks in clinical trials by automating tactical work—allowing teams to focus on strategic decisions that accelerate enrollment and development timelines.

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