The news: AstraZeneca and Oracle are partnering to use AI and healthcare data to streamline clinical trial recruitment across cancer, cardiovascular, respiratory, immunology, and rare diseases. Their first project with Abu Dhabi healthcare company M42 uses AI to identify and support patients with uncontrolled hypertension and recruit potential clinical trial participants.

Why it matters: Clinical trial patient recruitment has been a longtime challenge in drug development. For instance, median clinical trial enrollment timelines grew to more than 16 months in 2025, contributing to an overall increase in drug development timelines, according to a May IQVIA report.

Traditional patient recruitment also relies heavily on paid outreach, creating significant marketing overhead. A recent analysis in Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science found the median budget for centralized patient recruitment outreach exceeded $1.3 million across six therapeutic areas, with social media and digital ads accounting for an average 65% of those budgets. To reduce these costs and find patients earlier, other drugmakers are pursuing similar efforts to AstraZeneca-Oracle's. Novo Nordisk partnered with H1 in August to use AI for patient enrollment, trial design, and site selection, while Astellas and Bristol Myers Squibb have struck deals with Evinova involving AI-supported clinical trials and patient recruitment.

Implications for pharma and biotech marketers: Although AstraZeneca and Oracle haven't disclosed technical details, we know that Oracle's recruitment platform uses electronic health records (EHRs) from health systems to surface eligible patients for study teams.

Applied at scale, AI can transform routine care into a trial recruitment pipeline by mining vast amounts of unstructured health record data to identify overlooked patients. It could also help drugmakers reach potential participants through healthcare providers patients already know, reducing reliance on costly digital ad campaigns. Still, identifying eligible patients doesn't guarantee enrollment, and advertising will remain important for reaching those outside participating health systems.

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