The Beat

Why Clinical Trials Fail Even When the Science Is Strong with Heather Grey of Omega Healthcare

Episode Summary

Clinical trials fail far more often due to flawed operations and unusable data than because of poor science. In this episode, Heather Grey, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Real World Data, Clinical Trials, and Registry at Omega Healthcare, explains why clinical research continues to stall despite scientific breakthroughs and growing excitement around AI. She details how messy data, underprepared sites, missed timelines, and gaps in education across patients, providers, and pharma create systemic delays that limit patient access and slow drug development. Heather shows how pairing clinical expertise with AI-driven data curation can produce FDA-grade data, keep trials on track, and enable more health systems to participate in research. She concludes by emphasizing that AI alone is insufficient, and that strong infrastructure, human quality assurance, and operational discipline are essential for expanding trial access and diversity. Tune in and learn how fixing execution, not chasing hype, is the real key to accelerating clinical trials.

Episode Notes

About Heather Grey:

Heather Grey is a healthcare operator and commercial leader who has spent two decades inside the machinery of pharma, life sciences, and clinical research—seeing firsthand where trials break down and why execution matters more than ideas. As SVP and General Manager of Real-World Data and Clinical Trials at Omega Healthcare, she leads CurateIQ, which focuses on transforming messy, fragmented clinical data into FDA-grade assets that accelerate trials, support AI, and expand research beyond academic centers. Before Omega, she held senior leadership roles at Tempus AI, where she built and scaled clinical trial and RWD commercial operations, and at Optum Life Sciences, driving sales and client development across pharma and health systems. Her career spans everything from operating room work to frontline pharma sales to executive leadership, giving her a rare, end-to-end view of how science, data, and operations collide in the real world, and why clean data and operational discipline, not hype, determine whether innovation actually reaches patients.

Things You’ll Learn: 

• Clinical trials fail primarily due to operational breakdowns, such as delayed data entry, poor site readiness, and missed timelines, rather than flawed science.
• Most healthcare data exists in an unstructured and unusable state, making human-led curation essential for generating regulatory-grade insights and training AI.
• AI should amplify clinical expertise, not replace it, because accuracy and trust depend on continuous human quality assurance.
• The lack of infrastructure prevents 88% of health systems and most community centers from offering clinical trials.
• Expanding trials into community settings is crucial for enhancing access, diversity, and the real-world relevance of research.

Resources:

• Connect with and follow Heather Grey on LinkedIn.
• Follow Omega Healthcare on LinkedIn and visit their website.
• Email Heather directly here.