Breaking New Boundaries: The Synergy Between AI and Life Sciences
There was once a time when AI was the stuff of science fiction. Today, however, it’s very much a part of our reality.
While we’re seeing AI be applied in many aspects of everyday life, there’s no place more remarkable than Life Sciences for its uses of the technology.
True to their innovative nature, Life Sciences professionals are embracing AI to elevate their work in unprecedented ways.
From supercharging medical devices to personalized therapy breakthroughs, we’re diving into the ways AI is revolutionizing our primary Life Sciences markets.
Let’s begin in the realm of clinical research.
Despite the tremendous strides Life Scientists have and continue to make in global health, countless diseases are still without treatment. And while they’re doing their best to better the lives of millions of patients, there’s no denying that drug development is a lengthy, expensive and often unsuccessful process.
In fact, did you know that of the 10,000 molecules screened, only 10 make it into clinical trials?
Even then, while many still go on to fail, those that don’t take around 10-12 years to be brought to market, with R&D costing approximately $2.2 million per drug!
So, with ROI slowly declining, Life Scientists have now turned to AI to hurry their discovery of new medicines, leveraging the technology to mine ginormous datasets to enable faster and cheaper discovery of new molecules.
And the proof is in the pudding! AI has changed drug design forever, with numerous AI-assisted drugs having positive results throughout clinical trials.
But that’s not all…
AI pioneers have found ways to use the technology throughout clinical trials too, resulting in significantly reduced cycle times and costs while improving outcomes of clinical developments.
You see, if we look at clinical trials as a whole, until now, we’ve been using the same processes that we used over 50 years ago, with the whole ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ attitude. However, that’s also meant that the clinical trial phase in itself typically lasts around 5-7 years.
The reason why the process is so elongated is that the manual effort, rework and inefficiency can become a labyrinth to work around. Thankfully, AI can be implemented to overcome issues like fragmented data and disconnected systems as well as challenges in enabling innovative trial models, patient recruitment, enrolment, monitoring, retention and clinical trial diversity.
By generating study protocols and accelerating manual tasks, AI is also proving to create structured standardized data elements and interpret continuous streams of data, feeding downstream systems and auto-populating required reports and analyses.
And because of these smarter systems, research is becoming faster, safer, and significantly less expensive while allowing life-saving therapies to reach patients much more swiftly.
Learn more about AI’s capabilities at each stage of clinical trials
And now, to divert our attention to Medical Devices….
Due to its nature, many would presume Medical Technology and AI go hand-in-hand, and well, you wouldn’t be wrong.
Similarly to Pharma and Biotech, AI is helping researchers gain deeper insights by analysing vast amounts of data, which, in turn, helps with more precise diagnoses and more effective treatments.
But that’s not all. So far, AI has shown promise in improving the accuracy of diagnostic imaging and guiding medical workflows, as well as being the foundation for new devices and platforms to improve patient outcomes.
For example, the integration of AI technologies has boosted the development of medical devices detecting life-threatening illnesses such as strokes and pneumonia.
Find out more on how AI is helping medical device manufacturers innovate faster
This is just a small insight into AI’s potential in the world of Life Sciences. In reality, the technology is still so new, we’re only just scratching the surface of how it can truly transform each part of the value chain and, in the long run, the lives of millions of patients.
What are your thoughts on the science-tech fusion? Do you think AI is propelling work in your area of expertise? Let us know!
Catch you again soon!
The Meet Team