The Future Of Clinical Trials: Artificial Patients, Synthetic Data And Real-Time Analysis

In this article, we summarise three concepts that are already/ will soon become familiar for everyone interested in the future of clinical trials. An artificial patient is a set of data representing the desired human characteristics the best possible way that is based on large amounts of real patient data, without actually including any backtracable real-patient data. As many hope, one day artificial patients may be able to completely substitute humans and animals in clinical trials, most likely with animals being the first. Using real-world data as a patient group in a trial, often known as a synthetic control arm, can make research trials more efficient companies don’t have to enrol as many people in clinical trials and can guarantee that those who apply will indeed receive the treatment. Privacy concerns limit the amount of available data in medicine. It can fill in the missing data, making it possible to produce entirely fabricated patient datasets that are just as useful for training A.I. as the real thing, while keeping patient data protected. Synthetic data is cheap and easy to come by, much easier and cheaper than collecting huge amounts of messy real-world data. Introducing alternative truths based on ‘data’ to back decisions affecting societies – like healthcare funding, insurance models and so on – can have devastating consequences.