ICON Plans to Integrate Claude into Clinical Trial Preparation

ICON Plans to Integrate Claude into Clinical Trial Preparation

On July 28, contract research organization ICON announced a multiyear collaboration with Anthropic. ICON plans to use Claude within its Orbis platform to select clinical sites, assess the risk of recruitment delays, model protocols, and give clients access to ICON’s data and expertise.

A clinical trial can lose time before the first patient receives the drug. The sponsor must select hospitals and clinics that can recruit people with the required diagnosis and characteristics. The study team then agrees on the protocol, including who can enter the trial, which tests must be performed, and how often each participant must be assessed. Every protocol amendment requires another round of review and pushes back the trial’s start date.

In its announcement, ICON described four tasks for Claude. OneSearch and OnePlan are intended to help teams select sites and assess whether those sites can conduct the trial. A predictive analytics system will look for risk signals in ongoing trials, such as recruitment falling behind schedule. Another tool will model protocol options before submission so that teams can identify potential causes of future amendments earlier.

Pip White, Anthropic’s head of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Northern Europe, attributes delays primarily to participant recruitment:

“Participant recruitment is one of the largest bottlenecks in clinical development and causes delays in up to 80% of trials.”

A series of operational decisions must be completed before the drug reaches the first patient. The trial needs a suitable site, an agreed protocol, and participants who meet its eligibility criteria. ICON conducts trials for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and plans to integrate AI into these recurring decisions.

Within this process, Claude is intended to help teams make decisions before clinical data become available. ICON plans to use it for site selection, recruitment planning, and protocol preparation.