Boehringer Ingelheim and Microsoft have announced a strategic collaboration that aims to bring safe and effective therapies to patients sooner fueled by AI. The collaboration will focus on jointly investigating the potential of Digital Patient Twins in clinical development.

The joint research will explore disease-progression modelling, predictive outcome modelling and advanced trial simulation, including whether these approaches could support synthetic or hybrid control arms, which are alternatives to a conventional clinical control group, using existing data, and in the case of hybrid control arms, a combination of both.

In the end, the research may help reduce the number of patients required in control groups, accelerate the generation of clinical evidence, and improve clinical trial design. This way patients could potentially get faster access to innovative medicines, allow more trial participants to benefit from new treatments and increase the efficiency of drug development. Using clinical and other relevant data, these computational models may improve clinical research and evidence generation, with the aim of bringing new therapies to patients faster.

Agnes Heftberger, Corporate Vice President and CEO, Microsoft, Germany and Austria, said, “The collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim brings together pharmaceutical and scientific expertise with Microsoft's capabilities in AI and engineering. Germany is home to world-class pharmaceutical research and development. Together, we want to explore how technology could open new opportunities for clinical research.”

The companies intend to assess scientific and technical feasibility through modeling, prototyping and evidence generation across multiple disease and therapeutic areas, starting with lung health.

Dr. Lykke Hinsch Gylvin, Chief Medical Officer, Boehringer Ingelheim, said, “Boehringer Ingelheim is developing the richest pipeline in its history, and it is our goal to make clinical research more responsive to patients’ unmet needs. Exploring AI-enabled approaches, including the future potential of Digital Patient Twins, could support more patient-centric, informed and efficient clinical research. Crucially, scientific quality, patient safety and regulatory requirements must always be upheld. This partnership supports us in pursuing that ambition responsibly and in compliance with applicable requirements.”