Pharmaceutical Director recently convened a panel of experts to discuss the current state of AI within the pharmaceutical industry. Technology has become a major talking point across all industries over the past year and a half, but it’s been around much longer than that. The technology’s ability to collect, sort, analyze and generate results from large data sets makes it particularly attractive to the pharmaceutical industry, where experts often find themselves limited by the massive amounts of data they must work with. .
The panel includes Ryan Abbott, MD, JD, MTOM, PhD, professor of law and health sciences at the University of Surrey School of Law; Thomas Lau, Head of Engagement at Quilt.AI; and Robert Wells, health care regulatory attorney, shareholder at Baker Donelson. Each expert brought their unique perspective to a wide-ranging conversation.
One area that has received a lot of attention in the AI debate is the generative development space in the pharmaceutical sector. Here, technology offers a lot of promise, but also many concerns. Generative AI gives users the ability to quickly generate large amounts of text from simple prompts. However, the results may contain errors or hallucinations. Many people also fear that generative AI will replace human workers.
Pharmaceutical marketing is subject to unique marketing regulations, which appears to have slowed the adoption of AI in marketing. However, the technology has a wide range of applications for analyzing market data and adjusting and testing assets for specific markets.
No matter how AI is used, it will require human oversight. FDA guidance is still forthcoming (although the regulatory landscape has been steered onto an uncertain path based on recent election results). For now, pharmaceutical companies are monitoring AI developments internationally to try to predict how it will evolve domestically.
