ACT Brief: Mixed FSP Strategy, DIA Meeting Trends, and Patient Voice in Oncology

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

• Nick Scott from Biogen and Samantha Hadfield from Thermo Fisher Scientific explained how mixed FSP models are becoming strategic tools for greater agility, with geography and portfolio structure shaping deployment decisions. Sponsors are moving beyond the traditional FSP versus FIH binary to hybrid approaches that balance control with flexibility.
• Marwan Fathallah, president and CEO of DIA Global, shared key meeting themes including AI adoption, regulatory uncertainty, and explosive innovation across biotech and medtech. The convergence of these factors is reshaping how sponsors approach development strategy and risk management.
• Stacy Hurt, chief patient officer at Parexel, explained how federated AI is expanding oncology research possibilities while addressing a persistent problem: the patient voice gets lost earliest in development. Organizations need explicit ownership of patient needs from day one, not as an afterthought.

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