Applied Clinical Trials at the 2026 DIA Global Annual Meeting: Conversations on Data, Outsourcing, and the Patient Voice

Decentralized trial models have demonstrated real gains in enrollment performance and patient access, but operational switching costs, fragmented technology stacks, and unresolved gaps in the patient-site relationship raise a question the industry has been slow to confront directly.

Most AI pilots in drug development fail not from poor technology but from lack of strategic prioritization, organizational readiness, integrated data infrastructure, and disciplined governance, making success dependent on business discipline rather than technical capability.

In a video interview prior to the 2026 DPHARM conference, Andrea Valente, CEO of uMotif, shares what she expects to be at the center of the conversation—from building trust between patients and sites to where AI may and may not have a role in that relationship.

Clinical trials have spent decades perfecting data capture, but the execution layer underneath it, including decision workflows, data collection design, and lab connectivity, remains fragmented in ways that limit what AI can realistically deliver and that quietly compromise the scientific validity of the data itself.

In this Q&A, John Worden, chief commercial officer at Javara, discusses why clinical trial recruitment has remained stubbornly one-size-fits-all, how AI can identify patients at scale without displacing the clinician relationships that drive trust, and what care-integrated research engagement needs to look like for health systems, sponsors, and sites.

Participant engagement depends more on clarity and understanding than on gamification or incentives, requiring engagement embedded into trial workflows as a core design component rather than a peripheral consideration

In a video interview prior to the 2026 DPHARM conference, Andrea Valente, CEO of uMotif, explains why truly understanding the patient journey from beginning to end—and building that understanding into both study design and data collection tools—remains one of the industry's most important unfinished tasks.

In a video interview prior to the 2026 DPHARM conference, Andrea Valente, CEO of uMotif, explains why the real technology challenge isn't usability alone—it's making it easier for patients and sites to interact more effectively with each other.