5 takeaways from our SCOPE EU fireside chat with Sanofi
Our co-founders Liz Beatty and Kourosh Davarpanah sat down for a conversation with Sanofi’s Global Lead for External Engagement, Nadir Ammour, at this year’s SCOPE EU event. Their session—Partnering with sites using AI to identify and enroll more patients, faster—was a deep dive into our collaboration with sites to build and implement AI patient pre-screening globally, and the benefits for trial speed and access. Here are the five biggest takeaways.
Build with sites, not for them.
It’s always been time-consuming to find the right patients for trials, but it’s become even more challenging as trials have become more complex. This prompted Inato and Sanofi to co-develop Inato’s AI patient pre-screening with sites.
“With” is the operative word. Ammour spoke about Sanofi’s years-long efforts to reduce site burden in recruitment and how our work around AI patient pre-screening fit into this. He emphasized that it was important to co-design this with sites, versus talking at them about solutions.
“We spent a lot of time designing this with different types of sites…the variability that exists within sites across the globe is quite extensive, so it wasn’t like a one-size-fits-all approach could really work for the sites to adopt this technology,” added Beatty, on the importance of considering different site types and geographies while building AI patient pre-screening.
AI multiplies site capacity, making it possible to connect more patients with the right trials.
Historically, chart review was incredibly time-consuming, which meant two things. One, sites couldn’t assess patient eligibility for a trial up front, so they had to estimate how many patients they had for a trial during feasibility. And two, it was basically impossible to assess all patients for all opportunities, so inevitably there were some missed connections. AI patient pre-screening addresses both gaps.
“Don't underestimate the strength of the evidence that you can provide when you say ‘we have the patients.’ And the only way you can do that is with the data,” said Ammour on the value sponsors see in verified patient access data during feasibility. He also pointed out that knowing patient eligibility up front can help sites decide which studies they’re not a fit for, and go after one that they can perform well on.
Once a site is selected, AI doesn’t just streamline chart review; it makes it possible for sites to consider every trial option for every patient, something that was out of reach before. “We have some sites using the tech, and they’re pre-screening tens of thousands of patients across 20 studies. So it would take 200 years for a human to actually do this,” said Davarpanah, sharing that AI enables some sites to operate with the capacity of 100 times more coordinators.
Sponsor-specific tech is not the path to transformation.
Sites have long been bogged down with trial-specific technology. Inato’s AI patient pre-screening was designed differently. Sites can use it for all of their studies, across all sponsors. To date, it’s been used on about 600 trials.
Davarpanah spoke about how sponsors are walking a new line with technology: they want sites to operate more efficiently on their trials, but some are reluctant to push specific tools. “Some sponsors, like Sanofi, understand the value of encouraging usage to sites, and [saying] this is available on all studies.”
“Our view is that we want sites to transform the way they run clinical trials. Not just our clinical trials: all clinical trials,” said Ammour, also acknowledging that limiting site usage would only limit the number of patients that could ultimately access the right trials for them.
AI alone is not enough.
“The technology does not resolve everything,” said Ammour, touching on a theme that came up several times. The panelists spoke about a few main ingredients for success deploying AI, including:
- Building trust in the technology: Beatty said from the beginning, sites were clear that they needed to see how the AI assessed criteria so they could understand the rationale and make final decisions.
The panelists also spoke about the importance of building trust in new markets globally, including bringing proven value to the table, having the right stakeholders in the room, and being prepared to navigate security and compliance processes. Many trial technologies stay US-only; scaling this to new markets requires dedicated investment.
- Creating effective processes around AI: Plugging AI into a flawed process won’t deliver a big impact. The most successful sites build effective processes around the tech.
- The importance of human-in-the-loop: AI can make site teams much more efficient, but it’s no substitute for their expertise.
Sites using AI patient pre-screening outperform those that don’t.
There’s a lot of buzz about how AI can improve trials, but it’s important to stay grounded in its real impact. “It was very important, super important, that we are not just putting AI in for the sake of AI,” said Ammour.
Sites using Inato’s AI patient pre-screening are showing clear results. They deliver about 60% higher average monthly enrollment than sites that don’t use the tech, contributing to faster trial timelines overall.
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