Boehringer Ingelheim and Microsoft launched a collaboration to develop AI-powered “digital patient twins” aimed at simulating disease progression and treatment response for clinical trial use. The partners are evaluating whether the models can support trial design and potentially function as synthetic or hybrid control groups. Boehringer framed the work as exploratory, tied to robust scientific validation and applicable regulatory approvals—citing ambitions to reduce timelines by 30% to 50%. The announcement also aligns with US HHS initiatives (SURPASS) that already use digital patient twins for trial-design feasibility tasks. Separately, Anthropic outlined plans for AI across clinical trials, citing examples including BMS use of Claude for study-design assessment and Enveda’s document-to-LLM workflow, which the company says reduced review time from 25 hours to less than three for flagged issues.