Lindus receives UK funding for safe AI trial design optimization project

UK R&D agency Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) awarded Lindus Health funding to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) system for clinical trial design optimization as part of a wider safety program.

The project, a collaboration between Lindus and Nobuko Yoshida, a professor at the University of Oxford, aims to develop an AI-based technology that recommends safe and efficient trial designs.

The technology could help reduce setup times, lower costs, increase accuracy and, according to Lindus, build “much-needed trust in AI tools among clinical researchers who have been reluctant to adopt them.”

This idea was echoed by ARIA program director David Dalrymple, who said, “AI could unlock transformative improvements in our critical infrastructure, but right now adoption is limited because without ironclad safety assurances, we risk unintended and damaging consequences.”

He added, “Our goal is to prove that it’s possible to develop AI with quantitative safety guarantees, and that this could unlock significant economic value for the UK.”

Achieving this goal is the core aim of ARIA’s Safeguarded AI program, which is a £59 million, government-backed project focused on the development of a “gatekeeper” AI system tasked with understanding and reducing the risks of other AI agents.

AI experience

Lindus has experience using AI in trial design and optimization.

In 2023, for example, it shared details of a machine learning-based protocol analysis method that is able to predict whether a clinical study is likely to terminate early.

More recently, Lindus teamed with the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium to use AI to develop templates for sharing and submitting clinical trial data.

The ARIA funding comes just a few months after the London, UK-based CRO raised $55 million to “further develop” its AI-driven, electronic clinical trial platform.

Unsplash/Numan Ali