How AI Is Changing Pharma and Biotech Across the Healthcare Industry

Healthcare is currently experiencing one of its biggest transformations in history, with artificial intelligence in pharma and biotech being the driving force behind this revolution. The impact of this technology spans across the entire healthcare industry from drug discovery to improved patient treatment and care.

To help you understand this concept in an easier way, let's have a closer look at it.

The Old Way Was Too Slow and Too Costly

The development process of any drug used to take more than 12 years and require about $2.3 billion. However, most of the drugs that entered the process did not make it to the patients. Clinical trials were unsuccessful; drugs did not achieve their target. The result was a billion-dollar waste on nothing.

Moreover, at that time many pharma brands were not able to reach their revenue objectives. According to statistics, about two-thirds of pharmaceutical brands fail to achieve their revenue goals post-launch. All this results in layoffs, financial loss, and lack of treatment for the patients.

But there was something that had to be changed – and this was AI.

Speeding Up Drug Discovery

One of the major impacts of AI in the pharma industry comes in the form of the drug discovery process. The traditional process involved testing thousands of molecules individually. With the help of AI, this job is done automatically. The following points describe the advantages of AI in the field of drug discovery:

• Ability to analyze a huge amount of data quickly—AI analyzes millions of data points within hours, rather than years

• Ability to predict molecular candidates—it predicts the most suitable molecular candidates without costly laboratory analysis

• Analyzing protein interactions – helps the scientists understand the way diseases function in detail

• Virtual patient creation – creating a model that simulates the way a real-life body reacts to the drug

• Reduces development cost—as there are no failed experiments, there are more savings in terms of cost as well as time

Not only is the time reduced, but patients can benefit from faster availability of the treatment.

Making Clinical Trials Work Better

Clinical trials are the primary method used for proving the safety and efficacy of drugs. At the same time, clinical trials are rather time-consuming and expensive processes, which are difficult to manage. The inability to recruit a sufficient number of patients in due time is one of the most common reasons for the failure of many clinical trials.

Artificial intelligence is useful in overcoming these difficulties through the following solutions:

• Quickly finds the suitable patients by analysing their medical history and matching them to the study 

• Accelerates enrolment process to prevent the trial from getting stuck at its initial stage 

• Provides continuous monitoring of patients while they are in the course of the trial 

• Prevents potential errors by identifying any safety signal at an early stage

• Ensures greater accuracy of the trial by including the right patients into the study

Helping Patients Get Better Care

In addition to research, the role of AI in the healthcare industry goes beyond and includes the enhancement of patient treatments through AI applications in different areas. AI systems are able to diagnose patients based on the analysis of their medical images such as x-rays and scans with high precision. When it comes to cancer detection, AI systems have already proved their ability to identify tumors that could have been unnoticed by humans.

AI can also be applied to predicting medication adherence of patients. It is a critical issue since low medication adherence leads to annual costs of about $300 billion in the US healthcare industry and up to 125,000 deaths each year.

When it is predicted that a certain patient will discontinue taking their medications, it becomes possible to take preventive actions.

Transforming Pharma Sales and Marketing

But the use of AI technologies is transforming pharma sales and marketing processes too. Earlier, sales representatives visited doctors regularly, but there was no information on whom to visit at the right time. With the help of AI technologies, interactions become smarter and better directed.

How pharma sales and marketing benefit from AI technology:

• Precision targeting of the physician—AI finds out who those doctors are who will be willing to prescribe a particular medicine. 

• Optimal timing—it finds out the best moment to approach the physician.

• Personalization of the content—AI prepares the content that is suitable for each individual patient or physician.

• Market research—It analyzes social media, healthcare forums, and scientific articles to see the gaps that no human team could have seen.

• Customer experience - customers and physicians get answers quickly and in the way they need.

Companies like Eularis have been assisting pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies to implement such strategies for over 20 years. Eularis serves as an AI strategy and governance partner for biopharmaceutical companies to create a solid base for scaling AI—not to launch one pilot project after another.

Why Strategy Matters More Than Tools

This is something that many businesses tend to miss. The idea is that all one has to do is buy the latest technologies related to AI. One would implement a number of projects, build a couple of dashboards, and be done with it. This, however, does not seem to work.

This is because AI implemented in the absence of a strategy is nothing but a costly distraction.

Indeed, Eularis reports that according to their recent study of high-growth businesses, 93% of them have managed to use AI to generate double-digit results. However, it will not be enough to add the tools to reach such a level. What really matters is to start from a correct business challenge and build a strategy and only then choose the right technology.

As Andrée Bates, CEO at Eularis, says, AI implementation without a solid strategic basis may consume significant amounts of time and money.

The Road Ahead

Pharmaceutical companies find themselves in a critical juncture where the following factors play an important role:

• Patent cliffs lead to loss of revenues from their blockbusters.

• Layoffs put the teams under constant pressure to achieve much with little personnel.

• Regulations for artificial intelligence increase in both Europe and the USA

• The R&D pipeline becomes larger and still takes too long to bring value.

• The pace of competition quickens and lags only grow.

It means that the need for a strategic approach to AI adoption has never been so great. Those who start today and make a deliberate step forward are destined to succeed.

Conclusion

Pharmaceuticals and biotechnology firms should not delay or neglect the integration of AI into their operations anymore since it is revolutionizing drug discovery, clinical trials, patient care, as well as business growth of pharmaceutical firms. The results of such integration can be seen in shortened timeframes, reduced expenses, improved patient treatment, and increased efficiency of business operations.

However, the most important takeaway from the experience of AI adoption in pharma and biotechnology is that AI does not work alone, but it requires an effective strategy to function properly. Purchase of AI-based technologies without the creation of the strategy will result in spending of the company's funds in vain and frustration of employees working with AI. Those organizations that succeed in the adoption of AI are those which first understand what is needed, create a solid foundation for the implementation of the solution and utilize AI as the tool for solving the identified problem.

The future of the healthcare industry is currently being created, and AI plays an active role in this process. Regardless of whether one is a leader of a pharmaceutical firm or just an innovator of biotechnology, now is the time for action.