AI Aiding Pharmaceutical Manufacturing and Development

Artificial intelligence (AI) has a rapidly growing presence in many industries nowadays, also in the life sciences sector.

The market value of AI in drug development approached $700 million in 2018, which is a 350% increase compared to 2015. It is predicted that by 2024 the market value of AI in the pharmaceutical industry will be around $5 billion. This means that there is a huge potential for the pharmaceutical industry to enter into the AI game.

How does AI actually help and what can it do for the pharmaceutical industry?

There are many areas that could benefit from using AI.

• In clinical trials, companies spend billions of dollars to develop one single drug. However, by using AI, companies can target a specific subpopulation by analysing the response of that subpopulation to the drug in the clinical trials. This makes the development of targeted drugs commercially feasible.
• In the manufacturing process, by monitoring and gathering metrics such as temperature, moisture, etc., AI could start predicting performance and reduce the variability in clinical outcomes.
• A recent report (by McKinsey) has shown that - by using AI - a company was able to make targeted changes to its vaccine production process which resulted in a 50% yield increase saving the company between $5 and $10 million.     

Despite the many benefits, AI is still in its early stages of being applied in the pharmaceutical industry. Many companies are not prepared to use AI, as there is no data gathering planned. However, AI has the potential to decrease the cost and time of drug trials, to better determine patient outcomes with drugs, to better design drugs, etc. It can enable us to gather new insights into many processes and help us understand them better in order to make smarter decisions for the future.

Read the full article (Source: Pharmaceutical Online)