This post originally appeared on Fast Data Science’s blog on LinkedIn.
Clinical trials are at the heart of medical advancement but have considerable challenges, especially in risk management and cost estimation. Accurate forecasting of these factors is essential for a successful trial. Fast Data Science introduces AI-powered solutions that streamline and significantly enhance this process.
The financial stakes in clinical trials are high, with costs spanning several phases, locations, and participant demographics. Tr trials can avoid budget overspending, delays, and even early termination if these factors are managed effectively. That’s where AI can step in to help optimize and predict risk and cost.
Fast Data Science’s Clinical Trial Risk Tool enables trial managers to predict costs and risks precisely using artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). The tool evaluates potential risks and offers accurate cost estimates by analyzing clinical documents, helping research teams manage financial resources and reduce trial disruptions.
Handling drug-related data efficiently is crucial in clinical trials. Fast Data Science’s Drug Name Recognizer plugin for Google Sheets automates the identification of drug names in large datasets. It tags each drug with its DrugBank ID and MeSH ID and links to the NHS, providing trial managers with valuable information at the click of a button.
This plugin is handy when managing trials involving complex drug regimens. By reducing manual data entry, the Drug Name Recognizer speeds up assessing drug interactions, monitoring adverse events, and cross-referencing with regulatory databases—essential steps in the risk analysis process.
For example, manually tracking information can introduce human errors, potentially increasing trial risks when working with hundreds of drug names across various locations. By integrating this plugin, teams can ensure that drug-related data is processed accurately, leading to more reliable risk and cost predictions.
By incorporating tools like the Clinical Trial Risk Tool and the Drug Name Recognizer plugin, Fast Data Science provides trial managers with a seamless, automated experience. Both tools support more efficient trial management, ensuring trials remain on track financially and operationally.
Whether in the early stages of budgeting or deep into participant management, these AI-powered solutions help reduce time, effort, and uncertainty in your clinical trials. As a result, you can allocate resources more effectively, manage risks with greater precision, and bring innovations to market faster.
Clinical trials demand careful planning and resource management. With Fast Data Science’s suite of AI-driven tools—such as the Clinical Trial Risk Tool and the Drug Name Recognizer plugin—you can streamline processes, reduce costs, and confidently manage risks. These innovations save time and ensure that trials are run efficiently, allowing research teams to focus on what truly matters: advancing healthcare.
Try today’s Clinical Trial Risk Tool and Drug Name Recognizer plugin to enhance your cost and risk estimation strategies.
#ClinicalTrials #CostEstimation #AI #HealthcareInnovation #DrugData
Guest post by Youssef Soliman, medical student at Assiut University and biostatistician In 2025, the outsourcing of clinical trials has become a common strategy for pharmaceutical and biotechnology sponsors. Facing rising R&D costs and complicated studies, sponsors turn to Contract Research Organizations (CROs) and other external partners to manage clinical trials. This practice, known as outsourcing clinical trials, is adopted as a best practice for containing costs and enhancing efficiency in drug development [1].
Creating clinical trial budgets from protocols Creating a clinical trial budget is a fiddly and time consuming process. The playbook for running the clinical trial is a document called the protocol. You can find examples of protocols here. The protocol states how many participants will take part in the trial and also what visits and procedures will take place. Above: a protocol. Source: NCT04128579 A clinical trial manager must read the protocol and look for all pieces of information in the protocol that is relevant to the budget, in particular the Schedule of Events (also called Schedule of Assessments or Schedule of Activities), which is a table or series of tables which indicate which procedures and assessments will take place on which the visits.
