Modernizing Clinical Trials: AI, Access, and Equity

The system we have built — from the infrastructure and regulatory processes to the operational machinery of modern clinical research — was not designed for the majority of the world's population. Populations in Brazil, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia are systematically underrepresented in the datasets that determine which therapies are approved, for whom, and how. That is not simply a policy talking point — it is a structural challenge that can produce drugs optimized for a minority of the global disease burden. This panel will confront that challenge directly and demonstrate what it looks like when the people and institutions with the capacity to drive change come together.

The panel will bring together a researcher in São Paulo who knows what it takes to recruit patients where clinical research infrastructure may be limited; the European Medicines Agency — the regulator now mandating that trial populations reflect the people the drugs are meant to serve; a nonprofit building cancer clinical trial capacity across Africa from the ground up; the world's largest contract research organization, which will share how AI is reshaping trial operations in geographies that have historically been overlooked; and a CEO building national digital health platforms — government-endorsed and publicly governed — across 22 African countries, creating the data backbone that trials depend on but that has historically been lacking.

This is not a panel about aspiration. The people on this stage are already doing the work. The question for the audience is: What will it take to move from pockets of progress to systemic change? And are we willing to build the infrastructure needed to make clinical trials truly global, equitable, and fit for the AI era?