Powered by the industry’s largest set of digitized protocols and operational data, Braid enables smarter trial design and greater operational efficiency
Columbia, MD, August 12, 2025 — Advarra, the market leader in regulatory reviews and a leading provider of clinical research technology, today unveiled Braid, a production-ready AI engine that includes the industry’s largest and most comprehensive clinical trial operations dataset. Braid generates insights and powers automation across multiple systems, enabling sponsors, CROs, and sites to optimize how they design and conduct clinical trials.
What sets Braid apart is its foundation. Powered by a uniquely rich and comprehensive set of operational data—drawn from Advarra’s institutional review board (IRB) and clinical trial systems—Braid leverages protocol-related documents and operations data, such as cycle times for startup milestones, enrollment trends, and study modifications, from over 30,000 studies conducted by 3,500 sponsors. Braid curates and integrates comprehensive operational data with standardized ontologies, allowing for harmonization with other data sources to deliver unprecedented analytical and agentic capabilities.
“For years, operational data has been buried in static study documents and fragmented eClinical systems, too unstructured to access at scale,” said Laura Russell, SVP, head of data and AI product development at Advarra. “Braid changes that. It unlocks operational data across the entire trial lifecycle, capturing important milestones—such as study design modifications—as the study progresses, not just at a single point in time. This allows us to learn lessons from past trials and generate intelligence that improves how research is planned, executed, and scaled.”
Braid’s intelligence and automation support the entire trial lifecycle, enabling more coordinated research and reducing the burden on study teams, sites, and trial participants. It generates insights and evidence to improve trial planning and decision making. It also activates intelligent agents within Advarra’s products and other systems to automate workflows and streamline operations. Over time, Braid becomes smarter—accelerating operations, reducing burden, and driving greater precision.
“Advarra’s unmatched access to trial operations data and deep domain expertise uniquely position us to tackle the complex challenges of creating structured, context-aware data and operationally useful models—models that capture the nuance and precision clinical research demands,” said Gadi Saarony, CEO at Advarra. “While all decisions related to ethical review and participant protection are—and will continue to be—made by people, not AI, we’re actively exploring how AI can enhance Advarra’s systems and operations, enabling us to better support research stakeholders. This is part of our broader commitment to advancing innovation and efficient, ethical, and compliant research, and why we’re continuing to invest in our AI capabilities and technology leadership team.”
Advarra is accelerating the application of Braid across a variety of use cases. The first product in a new series of Advarra solutions powered by Braid will focus on improving study design through data-driven insights and benchmarks. This solution will introduce dynamic protocol engineering to help sponsors align study designs with real-world operational realities—reducing cost, timelines, and site and patient burden. For example, it will flag overly complex visit schedules, highlight eligibility criteria that may slow recruitment, and recommend startup timelines based on historical site performance.
Saarony continued, “While we have a bold vision for AI in clinical trials, we’re building at the speed of trust. For decades, Advarra has helped sponsors, CROs, and sites worldwide navigate clinical research with confidence and integrity. And we’re doing the same with AI. We’re committed to developing AI solutions that combine innovation and insights with human-in-the-loop judgment and context, and are guided by ethics, grounded in scientific rigor, and shaped by deep operational expertise.”
Join Advarra’s live webinar to learn more about Braid.
To mark the launch of Braid, Advarra will host a 30-minute webinar on Wednesday, September 10, 2025 at 11:00 am ET / 8:00 am PT. The session will explore Advarra’s vision for AI-driven innovation in clinical trials, showcase how Braid drives smarter, more efficient study operations, and highlight what’s ahead for AI at Advarra. Register to attend here.
About Advarra
Advarra breaks the silos that impede clinical research, aligning patients, sites, sponsors, and CROs in a connected ecosystem to accelerate trials. Advarra is number one in research review services, a leader in site and sponsor technology, and is trusted by the top 50 global biopharma sponsors, top 20 CROs, and 50,000 site investigators worldwide. Advarra solutions enable collaboration, transparency, and speed to optimize trial operations, ensure patient safety and engagement, and reimagine clinical research while improving compliance. For more information, visit advarra.com.
Media Contact:
Michelle Valentine
michellevalentinepr@outlook.com / mediarelations@advarra.com