News Summary

Dr. Khaled El Emam, a senior scientist at the CHEO Research Institute and Canada Research Chair in Medical AI, has led a groundbreaking study on using synthetic data to address participant recruitment challenges in clinical trials. The study demonstrated that synthetic data, or digital twins, can effectively supplement human data in trials, maintaining accuracy if at least 60% of the data remains human. This approach could transform clinical trials by mitigating recruitment barriers and is currently being tested on a larger scale across various diseases and populations. The findings were highlighted at the 2025 Synthetic Data Summit in Montreal, which focused on the potential of synthetic data to improve healthcare research while addressing privacy issues. The summit gathered experts from industry, government, academia, and regulatory agencies to explore the future applications of synthetic data in healthcare.