A commentary on the article, "Artificial Intelligence—The Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet" by Michael I. Jordan, published by Harvard Data Science Review (July 2019).

Researchers, clinicians, policymakers and patients are increasingly interested in questions about therapeutic interventions that are difficult or costly to answer with traditional, free-standing, parallel-group randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Examples include scenarios in which there is a desire to compare multiple interventions, to generate separate effect estimates across subgroups of patients with distinct but related conditions or clinical features, or to minimize downtime between trials. In response, researchers have proposed new RCT designs such as adaptive platform trials (APTs), which are able to study multiple interventions in a disease or condition in a perpetual manner, with interventions entering and leaving the platform on the basis of a predefined decision algorithm. APTs offer innovations that could reshape clinical trials, and several APTs are now funded in various disease areas. With the aim of facilitating the use of APTs, here we review common features and issues that arise with such trials, and offer recommendations to promote best practices in their design, conduct, oversight and reporting.

In response to the senators January 21, 2016 request for comment on their Sovaldi report, February 27, 2016. On behalf of all patients and their family members and friends, thank you for conducting the study on the pricing strategy of Gilead Sciences and shining a spotlight on the issue of drug pricing. When access to life-saving therapies is limited by affordability, important moral and ethical issues must be considered in addition to economic and political ones. For too long, we in the United States have ignored these issues for fear of “death panels” and difficult end-of-life decisions. But the growing number of breakthrough therapies and the rising cost of healthcare will soon force us to confront these issues directly. Your report and is an important step in helping us to develop a rational, ethical approach to dealing with this looming challenge.

The dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model (DSGE) marked a major milestone by capturing the dynamic change of economic variables over time. However, many DSGE models were exposed as having omitted critical structural linkages relevant to the financial crisis. To address these deficiencies, existing DSGE models should be enhanced to better incorporate the role of the financial sector and financial markets. In addition, these models should reexamine key micro-foundations of the model and consider behavioral components.

Translating scientific research into safe and effective drugs takes money—lots of money. Current estimates put the cost of developing a single successful drug at more than $2 billion by the time you include all the dead ends along the way; the out-of-pocket cost for just a single attempt is about $200 million. Drug development usually takes a decade or longer, and the probability of success is low (historically around 5 percent for oncology). As a result, investors are now shying away from the pharmaceutical industry, investing instead in less risky and more attractive opportunities like big data, social media and e-commerce. Financial engineering techniques can help change that, directing capital from those wishing to invest it to those who need it to develop new drugs.

Hedge funds are considered by many investors to be an attractive investment, thanks in large part to their diversification benefits and distinctive risk profiles. The major drawbacks are their high fees and lack of transparency. Research by Jasmina Hasanhodzic and Andrew W. Lo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology raises the possibility of creating passive portfolios that provide similar risk exposures to those of hedge funds at lower costs and with greater transparency. Hasanhodzic and Lo find that for certain hedge fund strategies, these hedge fund “clones” perform well enough to warrant serious consideration.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a remarkable agency, one of the crown jewels of the US government. Its staff and structure are dedicated to safeguarding American public health, and although we sometimes complain about its role as gatekeeper, we all sleep better knowing that our foods and drugs have passed the FDA’s careful scrutiny. Its regulatory scope and process reflect the technical demands of its responsibilities, and the FDA is one of the very few federal agencies that have taken a lead in defining and developing the new field of regulatory science.

The reports by Wim van Harten and colleagues and Sabine Vogler and colleagues in The Lancet Oncology on the costs of cancer drugs in European countries deserve special attention from all oncology and biopharmaceutical stakeholders. van Harten identified that, in 15 European countries, list prices can be up to 92% lower than the highest reported, with actual prices paid up to 58% lower. These findings are backed up by Vogler and colleagues' study in 16 European countries, Australia, and New Zealand, which documented that highest-minus-lowest list price differences ranged from 28% to 388% for cancer drugs. Such variability argues strongly for greater transparency in drug pricing and the circumstances leading to such differences. But most importantly, it underscores the need to establish the true value of cancer therapies, and those who have championed this cause have been handed unequivocal evidence confirming what they have long suspected: drug prices are typically driven by what the market will bear.

Americans are increasingly apprehensive about our future, so it is inspiring when Congress produces legislation intended to both enhance our health and expand our economy. The 21st Century Cures Act, recently passed by the House with an impressive bipartisan majority vote of 344 to 77, intends to accelerate the many-step process of drug discovery and development, from basic scientific research to clinical development to delivery, distribution, and ongoing monitoring. Among other things, the legislation boosts National Institute of Health funding, dramatically speeds up the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval process, and aims to make use of new information technology to better monitor the performance of medical products after they reach the market. This landmark bill now awaits a comparable piece of legislation being developed by the Senate Health Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Together, they will transform the biomedical ecosystem and provide the foundation for the next several decades of innovative life-saving and health-enhancing solutions for our nation and the world.

WSJ Wealth Expert Andrew W. Lo of MIT says robo advisers are the rotary phones to today’s iPhone--technology that has great potential but it still immature.