Contract research organization Icon announced a multi-year collaboration with Anthropic this week to bring Claude’s AI capabilities to clinical trials.
To advance Icon’s digital innovation, the company will leverage Anthropic’s Life Sciences research team to build on Icon’s agentic AI platform, Orbis, according to a release.
The partnership is designed to improve site intelligence and study planning, powering Icon’s OneSearch and OnePlan tools to improve site selection and study feasibility, expanding Orbis’ predictive intelligence to enable real-time detection of enrollment risks, optimizing trial protocol design and scenario modeling and integrating Icon’s clinical knowledge into client systems.
“Far too often, the barrier to getting medicines to patients faster is operational, not scientific. Take study enrollment as an example—it’s one of the biggest bottlenecks in clinical development and causes delays in up to 80% of trials,” said Pip White, head of Ireland, UK and Northern Europe for Anthropic. “This is exactly the kind of operational challenge that Icon's trial-delivery expertise, paired with Claude, is well suited to address."
The collaboration aims to allow clients to access Icon’s insights and expertise via Claude. The AI will also be deployed throughout the organization, including Claude Code for developers, Claude for knowledge teams and Claude Science for clinical teams. The pact is designed to further automate high-volume, repeatable activities.
“By combining Icon’s clinical development expertise, global delivery model and proprietary trial intelligence with Anthropic’s frontier AI capabilities, we believe we can help sponsors make better decisions earlier, execute studies with greater precision and ultimately accelerate the delivery of medicines to patients," said Icon CEO Barry Balfe in the release.
Anthropic and Claude have had an up-and-down relationship with the biotech world recently. In January, Anthropic launched Claude for Healthcare, a purpose-built tool for the healthcare system, following the October launch of Claude for Life Sciences.
Then, in March, the Department of Health and Human Services instructed employees that they could no longer use Claude, and President Donald Trump sought to blacklist the company from federal contracts after disagreements with the Department of Defense over how its AI tools are used.
Undeterred, Anthropic acquired AI startup Coefficient Bio in a $400 million stock deal in April. The following month, Bristol Myers Squibb signed an enterprise-wide AI deal with Anthropic. Since then, Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan joined Anthropic’s board of directors as ties between biopharma and Silicon Valley deepen.