Florence automating the connection between study sites and sponsors, with AI tools already live

As drug pipelines grow faster than site capacity, Florence moves from storing trial work to doing it, with research teams in charge of the decisions

ATLANTA, Oct. 26, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Florence, the clinical trial technology company that pioneered the electronic investigator site file (eISF), today announced its vision for clinical research: connect, not just collect. Speaking at Research Revolution in Atlanta, CEO Ryan Jones said Florence is already automating the connection between study sites and sponsors, with both copilot and agentic offers demonstrated during the keynote. The approach puts humans over software: software does the legwork, and research teams stay in charge of the decisions.

For two decades, trial technology has been built to collect: more portals, more logins, more data trapped in more places. Research teams still move data and documents between eConsent, ePRO, EHR, imaging, and eISF systems by hand. In Florence's 2026 State of Clinical Trial Technology Report, 64% of sites said sponsor technology duplicates work they already do, and 95% said they still exchange study documents by email.

"We've built a world where humans work for the software, instead of the software working for humans," said Jones. "The answer can't be asking the same people to do more work with more tools. We're changing how the work gets done by putting humans over software, so software does the legwork and people make the decisions."

A widening capacity gap

AI is speeding up drug discovery. Pipeline drug candidates are growing almost 8% a year, while site activations are growing about 4% a year, according to the firm. Florence estimates the result is a 33% gap between the therapies ready for testing and the sites available to test them.

"There's a difference between protecting sites from unnecessary work and protecting an operating model that creates unnecessary work," said Catherine Gregor, chief clinical trial officer at Florence. "The status quo isn't burden-free, and at some point the burden of not changing becomes greater than the burden of change."

From system of record to system of automation

Florence pioneered the eISF in 2015 as a system of record that stores the work. Today it is a system of action, connecting work that sites and sponsors used to collect separately. The next step is a system of automation that does the work.

Florence is already putting this into practice. Site Feasibility, live since September, lets study sites answer sponsor questionnaires from a library of their own past answers, with AI recommending each answer. DocQC checks documents for quality problems as they arrive. In both, a person makes the final call. Florence will share more about its AI workflows for feasibility, study startup, document quality, and monitoring on Oct. 27.

A network built for automation

Florence enters this next step at record scale:

• 88,000 study sites supported in 90 countries
• More than 44 million documents created in Florence
• Record study volumes surpassing 50,000 protocols
• About 140 regulatory approvals supported over the past decade, including 84 medical device approvals and 39 drug and biologic approvals

About Florence

Florence advances cures by automating the connection between study sites and sponsors. Florence pioneered the electronic investigator site file (eISF) and now connects the work across study startup, conduct, monitoring, and closeout, starting with empowering study sites to work in systems they control, rather than another sponsor portal. Software does the legwork, and research teams stay in charge of the decisions. Florence supports 88,000 study sites in 90 countries. Founded in Atlanta, Florence is building a system of automation for clinical research. Learn more at www.florencehc.com

SOURCE Florence Healthcare