Clinical Research
AI for teams that run trials, from people who built the systems trials run on.
BC Consulting trains clinical operations, supply chain, data management, quality, and commercial teams to build their own AI agents, develops applications that fit a GxP posture, and helps sponsors and service providers get from scattered experiments to a governed operating model. Twelve years in IRT, RTSM, and eClinical software means the examples come from your studies.
Who this is for
Sponsors, and the CROs, IRT and RTSM vendors, clinical supply companies, and eClinical providers that serve them. The people who get the most out of our work are the ones closest to the repeated tasks: the clinical operations lead who writes the same monitoring visit summary forty times a year, the supply planner rebuilding a resupply scenario by hand, the data manager reading listings for the same discrepancies, the quality associate drafting CAPAs from a template, and the business development team answering RFIs that ask questions the company answered last quarter. Their managers are our buyers; those people are who we build for.
What we do for clinical teams
Three services, and the numbers from the work behind them.
90%
less effort per RFI response
From a 20-hour minimum to about two, once the first draft moved to AI and the team reviewed instead of wrote.
Reducing RFI Effort by 90% →75
clinical supply professionals trained in one program
A global top-10 pharmaceutical company, foundations through hands-on builds, with the curriculum living on the learning platform afterwards.
10
working agents built in one day
A ten-person commercial team at a clinical trial service provider, each person leaving with an agent running against real accounts.
8
GCSG bootcamps and sessions since 2024
AI foundations, hands-on, and plenary sessions for the Global Clinical Supplies Group in the US and Europe, including the 2026 plenary on AI in the clinical supply chain.
Client names withheld. The program structures are published in the course catalogue.
AI Training
Your team builds its own agents in a day
One on-site working day. The morning covers how the models work and where the lines are in a regulated business; the afternoon is spent building. Everyone leaves with a working agent pointed at a task from their own job.
Ten agents in a day for a ten-person team; the same structure scaled to 75 people at a top-10 pharma.
How it works →AI Application Development
Applications built around your systems and your SOPs
Agents for the work your team repeats, document pipelines with a person in the loop, and decision tools over your operational data. You own the code, the prompts, and the run guides.
A supply control tower for a clinical supply and comparator sourcing company; a pricing engine and sales deck generator for a clinical technology startup.
How it works →AI Implementation
From a few enthusiasts to a governed operating model
Tool selection against real requirements, acceptable-use policy and SOP language that fits a GxP quality system, a pilot with baselines, and a rollout sequenced with training so adoption sticks.
We run BC Consulting, this site, and the learning platform under the same written rules we hand to clients.
How it works →Where AI drafts and where a person signs
Across a trial, the model does the first pass and a qualified person makes the decision and owns the record. That line is the design rule for everything we build and teach.
- 1
Protocol and planning
AI drafts
Drafts the supply forecast scenarios and the first RFI answers
A person signs
Signs the plan
- 2
Study build
AI drafts
Drafts UAT scripts and configuration checklists
A person signs
Approves the spec and runs the test
- 3
Supply and logistics
AI drafts
Explains resupply scenarios and flags exceptions
A person signs
Makes the shipping decision
- 4
Conduct
AI drafts
Reads listings for discrepancy patterns, drafts visit summaries and deviation write-ups
A person signs
Reviews and files the record
- 5
Quality and close-out
AI drafts
Drafts CAPAs from the template, assembles the audit trail
A person signs
Owns the CAPA and answers the inspector
Sample agenda
An AI Training Day, hour by hour
This is the default shape of the day for a mixed clinical group. We rework the examples and the afternoon builds for the roles in the room.
- 8:30
Coffee, setup, and accounts
Everyone logs in to the model platform your organization has approved and confirms they can run a prompt. We fix access problems now so nobody loses the afternoon to IT.
- 9:00
How the models actually work
What a large language model is and is not, why it is confident when it is wrong, and what that means for a business where a wrong answer ends up in a TMF. No math, plenty of clinical examples.
- 10:00
Delegating a task and checking the result
The working pattern for the whole day: give the model a role, the context it needs, the output you want, and a way for you to verify it. Practiced on a protocol deviation summary and a site query response.
- 11:00
Safe use in a regulated business
What may and may not go into a prompt, how your data handling agreement with the vendor works, where an AI-assisted draft sits in your document control, and how to keep a record an auditor can follow.
- 12:00
Lunch and picking your build
Each participant chooses one task from their own week that they would hand to a capable new hire. We help scope it to something that can be finished by 3:30.
- 1:00
Build block one
Everyone builds their own agent with us walking the room. Typical builds: a listing review assistant for data management, a resupply scenario helper for supply chain, a first-draft CAPA writer for quality, a prospect brief for sales.
- 2:30
Build block two: testing and hardening
Run the agent against real examples, find where it fails, and add the checks and instructions that fix it. This is where participants learn the most.
- 3:30
Demos
Every person shows their agent to the room in three minutes: the task, the result, and what they would do next. Managers see what their team can do by the end of one day.
- 4:15
Next steps and the platform
What to do in the first week back, how to keep the builds maintained, and how the BC Consulting Learning Platform carries the curriculum after we leave.
Sample agenda. Timing and examples are adjusted to your team, your approved platform, and your site.
Questions clinical teams ask first
The answers a quality group or an IT security review will want before anything else.
What happens to our data during training and during a build?
Nothing leaves your control. Training runs in the model accounts your organization has already approved, under your enterprise agreement, so the vendor terms you negotiated are the terms that apply. We do not bring our own accounts for participants to use, and we do not take copies of your documents home. When we build an application, the data stays in your tenant and we work inside it. If your organization has no approved platform yet, that is the first conversation in an implementation engagement, and we will not run a training day on consumer accounts against real study data.
Which models do you use?
Whichever ones your organization has approved. We teach the idea, not the tool: how to hand a task to a model, give it what it needs, and check what comes back. That works the same in Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot, and it is why the training holds up when the tools change. A year ago most of our sessions ran on ChatGPT and Gemini; today our own operation runs mostly on Anthropic’s Claude models, and that is what we recommend when a client has no preference and the work involves long documents and careful instruction following.
For a build, the model is a component we choose against the task. The design, the prompts, the checks, and the run guides are what you own, and they are written so the model can be swapped without rebuilding the application.
What does an engagement cost, and how is it shaped?
Training is priced per day, per cohort, with a cap on room size so every participant builds. Application development is scoped as a fixed-price build with a defined deliverable, then an optional monthly maintenance retainer once it is in production. Implementation work is a short assessment followed by a fixed-scope program, and we will tell you in the assessment if you do not need the program. Ask for numbers on the call; we would rather quote against your situation than publish a rate card that does not fit it.
How does this sit with 21 CFR Part 11 and our GxP quality system?
The same way any other tool does: by being explicit about what the AI produces and who is accountable for it. In a GxP context we treat model output as a draft that a qualified person reviews and signs, never as the record itself. The controlled record stays in your validated system, with its audit trail, its electronic signatures, and its access controls untouched. Our governance work writes that position into an SOP so it is not left to individual judgment, and our builds keep a log of prompts, versions, and outputs so a reviewer can reconstruct how a draft was produced.
Does an AI application need to be validated?
It depends on what it touches. An agent that drafts an internal brief from public information is a productivity tool and does not need computer system validation. An application whose output feeds a GxP decision or record needs a risk-based assessment, and usually the answer is to keep the model out of the critical path: the model drafts, a person decides, and the decision lands in a validated system. Where a build does need formal qualification, we deliver requirements, test evidence, and a traceability matrix in the format your quality group already uses. We spent twelve years on the vendor side of IRT and eClinical systems, including inspection and audit support, so this is familiar ground.
Who owns what we build?
You do. Code, prompts, configuration, and documentation are delivered into your repositories and your accounts. We keep no license over them and no lock-in. The maintenance retainer exists because models change and your process changes, not because you cannot run the application without us.
Founder
Why the training works
I am Bryan Clayton, and I run BC Consulting. I taught high school music for nine years before I spent twelve years in clinical trial software, most of it on IRT and RTSM systems, where a configuration mistake shows up as a patient getting the wrong kit. I have sat in the bid defenses, supported the inspections and audits, and run the project teams that took the call when a study needed something fixed.
Every training day ends with each person holding a working tool. I know what a room looks like twenty minutes into a lecture nobody asked for, and I know the difference between a group that watched a demo and a group that built something and broke it and fixed it. I have been an assistant baseball coach at North Penn High School since 2016, which keeps that skill sharp.
When a data manager asks whether an agent can read a listing for a specific discrepancy pattern, I do not need the question explained. I have shipped software into a validation process like yours.
Start with a conversation
Tell us which team, which repeated task, and which platform you have approved. We will come back with a proposed shape for the day or the build. If the honest answer is that you do not need us yet, we will say so.
Writing for clinical teams
What the Fable Suspension Exposes About AI Risk in Clinical Trials
On June 12 the US government suspended access to a frontier AI model used by hundreds of millions of people. For clinical trial technology companies validating AI under FDA guidance, it exposed a question the regulations do not answer: what happens when the model you built on is no longer yours to control.
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Where AI actually helps a small clinical operations team
The pattern from MIT Technology Review's small-business AI piece applies to small clinical ops teams, with sharper stakes. Where AI fits, where it does not, and what separates the teams getting real value from the ones still talking about it.
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What Anthropic's $400M Biotech Acquisition Means for Your eClinical Stack
Anthropic paid $400M for a biotech team working inside regulatory workflows. What that acquisition signals about the future of the eClinical stack and the questions clinical operations leaders should be asking their vendors now.
4 min read
