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An AI boost for clinical trials

Big data and artificial intelligence could help to accelerate clinical testing.
  1. Marcus Woo

    1. Marcus Woo is a science writer based in San Jose, California.

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Credit: Totto Renna

Kevin Hughes needed volunteers. It was 1994, and the breast-cancer surgeon was starting a randomized, controlled trial at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He and his colleagues wanted to test the efficacy of a treatment regimen commonly followed by people with a certain type of early-stage breast cancer: surgery followed by the drug tamoxifen and radiation therapy. Despite being an established protocol, it wasn’t clear whether the radiotherapy was beneficial for all women — and, in particular, those who were older.

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Nature 573, S100-S102 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02871-3

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Digital health, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

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