How AI is helping find a vaccine for COVID-19

TechRepublic's Karen Roby talked with Dan Drapeau, an artificial intelligence (AI) expert and head of technology and Blue Fountain Media, about AI's role in the pharmaceutical industry. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. Karen Roby: We're hearing about AI making such an impact in so many different industries, but it might surprise some that it's really entrenched now in pharmaceuticals. Dan Drapeau: There's been a growing need for it. Really, over the past few years, I'd say AI became a little bit more prominent in the pharma space, probably around 2015, 2016, when precision medicine became a little bit more popular. That's more around coming up with individualized treatment for patients rather than typically what the industry was doing, which is producing big blockbuster-type drugs.