Collaboration to connect AstraZeneca’s scientific and therapeutic expertise with Oracle’s real-world data, cloud, AI, and clinical capabilities to accelerate clinical research and bring evidence-driven insights into care workflows to help improve patient care

AUSTIN, Texas and ABU DHABI, UAE, Oct. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Oracle today announced an agreement with AstraZeneca to explore how AI and real-world data can help clinicians identify eligible patients for clinical trials, accelerate evidence generation, and bring relevant research insights into everyday care. The collaboration is expected to combine AstraZeneca’s scientific and therapeutic expertise with Oracle’s health data, cloud, AI, analytics, and clinical workflow capabilities.

Through a non-binding agreement, the companies plan to explore selected use cases that could improve clinical-trial efficiency and success by leveraging modern applications and AI to help care teams identify eligible patients earlier and easier, resulting in greater access to clinical trials for patients in need and helping to overcome one of the largest obstacles in clinical trials – patient recruitment. Initial disease areas to be explored could include oncology; cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases; respiratory and immunology; and rare diseases.

Pascal Soriot, Chief Executive Officer, AstraZeneca said: “This unique collaboration brings leaders in healthcare and AI together at a global scale to accelerate the journey from the discovery of medicine to patient care. Combining AstraZeneca’s world class science with Oracle’s deep data and technology expertise, we can help clinicians identify patients sooner, optimize clinical trials, and generate evidence continuously across the lifecycle of a medicine.”

“Some of the most important opportunities for AI are in healthcare, where better use of data can help turn scientific innovation into better outcomes for patients,” noted Mike Sicilia, chief executive officer, Oracle. “By bringing AstraZeneca’s scientific expertise together with Oracle’s data, cloud, AI, and healthcare capabilities, we have an opportunity to help accelerate research, connect more patients to clinical trials, and ultimately bring relevant insights into care faster.”

Connecting Research and Care

Anne-Claire Gerbaldi, Chief Digital, Data and AI Officer, AstraZeneca, added: “Too many patients are diagnosed late or face a long journey to get the care they need. To build the next decade of medicine, we aim to harness AI to connect learnings across science, clinical trials, and everyday care, generating insights that continuously strengthen research, accelerate innovation, and enhance patient outcomes. Bringing together the unique capabilities of Oracle and AstraZeneca, we believe we can support smarter clinical trials, strengthen safety monitoring, and help ensure patients are diagnosed sooner and receive the right care.”

Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager, Oracle Health and Life Sciences, said: “Healthcare progress depends on shortening the distance between scientific insight and the decisions clinicians make every day. AstraZeneca brings deep scientific and therapeutic expertise, and Oracle will deliver the secure data, cloud, AI, and clinical workflow capabilities. This collaboration has the potential to help health systems identify eligible patients sooner, broaden access to clinical trials, and generate evidence that supports the next decision, all under the governance of the health systems delivering care.”

AstraZeneca and Oracle intend to explore a continuous learning model in which insights from clinical research and routine care help inform future study design, safety monitoring, and patient care. The companies plan to establish shared governance, reusable technical components, and agreed outcome measures to assess results and determine whether successful approaches could extend across disease areas and geographies.

About Oracle
Oracle offers integrated suites of applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please visit www.oracle.com.

Trademarks
Oracle, Java, MySQL and NetSuite are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation. NetSuite was the first cloud company – ushering in the new era of cloud computing.

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SOURCE Oracle

Branded AI assistant brings everyday business activities into messaging channels, reducing the need for separate software and specialist teams

DUBAI, UAE, Oct. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Loyyal today unveiled the Perxi AI Business Suite, enabling small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to manage everyday business activities through WhatsApp. Building on its introduction as a loyalty assistant, Perxi brings commerce, customer engagement and business management into one conversational interface, with capabilities including ordering, customer service and loyalty.

The suite helps SMEs and direct-to-consumer brands manage these activities without purchasing separate ordering systems, customer relationship management software or support tools. Its conversational approach reduces the need to hire specialists or train employees to operate multiple systems.

“Small business owners should be able to focus on growth without assembling a collection of software tools,” said Ashish Kumar Singh, Founder and CEO of Loyyal.

“Perxi brings everyday business capabilities into WhatsApp under each business’s own brand. We want to make these tools affordable and accessible while helping businesses retain greater control over their customer relationships, data and decisions.”

Perxi provides the underlying technology, while each business launches its assistant under its own brand name. Customers engage directly with the business they recognise, rather than entering a separate Perxi marketplace.

Customers can place orders, ask questions, receive assistance and access rewards within a familiar conversation. There is no additional branded application to install or separate login to remember. This approach is designed to appeal to younger consumers accustomed to discovering and interacting with brands through mobile messaging.

Beyond WhatsApp, Perxi can be deployed across messaging channels suited to each business and market, including Instagram, WeChat and KakaoTalk.
Multilingual capabilities enable businesses to serve customers in their preferred languages, supporting brands operating beyond English and those engaging diverse communities.

As conversational commerce and AI assistants become more prominent, SMEs face growing expectations for convenient, responsive interactions. Bringing business services into messaging channels offers a way to meet those expectations while building direct customer relationships.

Marketplaces and aggregators offer a fast route to market, but access to customer information and engagement opportunities varies. Perxi helps businesses establish a direct channel and gain insights from their own customer conversations and transactions.

These insights can inform service improvements, personalised engagement and retention, while reducing dependence on intermediaries for customer access.

Pricing is designed to remain simple and affordable. Loyyal plans further services under the same umbrella.

Perxi will return to exhibit at Dubai AI Festival on October 26–27, 2026, at Dubai World Trade Centre.

About Loyyal

Loyyal is a US-born, UAE-based enterprise technology company helping businesses turn loyalty and customer engagement into growth and revenue. Combining patented blockchain technology with AI, its modular portfolio spans loyalty management, rewards, points exchange, offers, gift cards, gamification and conversational business assistants.

Media Contact

Marketingdepartment@loyyal.com

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WARRINGTON, England, Oct. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Six in ten retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers are worried about their supply chains and expect rising sourcing and transport costs over the next year. The right kind of AI could ease that pressure, according to experts. But adoption in these sectors lags behind the rest of the UK economy, and fewer businesses there say AI is actually improving how they operate.

AI use among UK businesses has climbed to 34.7% as of June 2026, according to Office for National Statistics data. Manufacturing sits at 26.9%, while the wholesale and retail sector sits at 28.4%. The industries that keep Britain’s shops stocked and factories running have adopted AI more slowly than the country as a whole.

Inefficient supply chains are one of several drivers of rising prices, and part of the cost tends to land on the shopper. AI built for forecasting could ease some of that pressure, according to Sigrún Gunnhildardóttir, CPO at AGR Inventory, a company providing demand forecasting and inventory planning software to wholesalers, retailers and manufacturers.

“A lot of it comes down to reactive procurement, paying a premium for expedited freight and emergency safety stock because the shortage wasn’t forecast. It’s a real driver of margin compression, and some of it shows up in the price consumers pay,” says Sigrún.

Nationally, close to 59% of businesses using AI say it’s improving their operations, the single most common reason given. In manufacturing, wholesale and retail, that figure drops to around 47%, roughly 12 points behind the national average, despite these being the sectors where operational tools like forecasting and inventory planning could counteract rising prices.

“Looking at the numbers, most of what’s been adopted in these sectors won’t help anyone decide how much stock to order,” says Sigrún.

Mostly free, mostly for content

Businesses in wholesale and retail are more likely than the national average to have adopted AI through free software, and manufacturers are noticeably less likely to buy dedicated tools. Among the AI these sectors do use, text and visual content creation are the most common applications. Data processing, the type of AI behind demand forecasting, trails well behind, according to the ONS figures.

Share of all businesses

Share of AI-using businesses

Source: ONS Business Insights and Conditions Survey, Wave 159, 15 to 28 June 2026

“Off-the-shelf models have no visibility of stock positions, supplier lead times or demand history. Without that context, they can’t support a replenishment decision. And businesses need to be able to see what data an AI recommendation is based on, rather than simply being given an answer,” says Sigrún.

Businesses already know what they’re missing

Forecasting is the AI capability in highest demand among the manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers AGR works with, rated above every other option the company has asked about. The type of AI it relies on, advanced data processing and modeling, are among the least adopted in these sectors, according to the ONS figures.

“When our clients tell us what they want from AI, forecasting comes first. They want earlier warning on demand shifts, anomalies and the effect of promotions, so they can plan replenishment around it,” says Sigrún.

With six in ten of those concerned about their supply chains expecting sourcing and transport costs to rise over the next year, the gap between what these businesses want from AI and what they’ve adopted could become costly.

“These businesses want AI, and they’re under pressure on costs. But they don’t just want more AI. They want tools that understand their operational data, show them how recommendations are reached and leave them in control of the final decision. That’s very different from simply giving employees access to a general purpose AI tool,” says Sigrún.

Methodology

The sector-level figures on AI adoption, technology type, adoption method and purpose are taken from the industry breakdowns in the Office for National Statistics’ Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS), Wave 159 (15 to 28 June 2026).

Supply chain cost figures are drawn from BICS Wave 163 (17 to 30 August 2026) and are shares of businesses that reported concerns about their supply chains.

BICS excludes agriculture, energy, public administration, public health and education, and financial services, so its coverage reflects the UK’s private trading economy.

Customer insights are drawn from a survey of 50 members of AGR Inventory’s customer panel, conducted in July and August 2026 among retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers. More than half of respondents were supply chain decision makers. Respondents rated six AI-enabled capabilities for their value on a scale of 1 to 5.

Contact information

Randi W. Stebbins, Head of Communication
randi@agrinventory.com
AGR

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