Only 1% of trials involve AI, and who is behind them

Someone counted how many studies on ClinicalTrials.gov actually involve AI. It comes out to about 1%. That is the number people will share, but the part worth reading is who is behind it.

Almost three quarters of those studies are sponsored by hospitals and universities, while industry barely shows up. Most of them are not drug trials at all: they are clinicians validating a diagnostic model on their own patients, one center at a time.

So the picture is not pharma quietly transforming clinical development. It is doctors testing whether a tool works before they trust it with anyone.

Which is a strange thing to sit next to the noise. Every week there is a new claim about halved timelines and smarter recruitment. Then you look at what teams say when surveyed honestly, and most of them have barely started.

I recognize that distance. Getting a model to do something impressive takes an afternoon. Getting it to survive an audit, with someone willing to sign their name under the output, takes a year. That second part is the whole job, and nobody puts it on a slide.