Q&A: AI Could 'Redesign' the Drug Development Process

This week at the World Medical Innovation Forum in Boston, industry experts gathered to discuss the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. While AI has made waves in diagnosing certain diseases better than doctors, there's another area where the tech is being applied that might eventually have even greater impacts on health. Today, at least 18 pharmaceutical companies and more than 75 startups are applying machine learning to drug discovery--the complex, expensive process of identifying and testing new drug compounds. These companies are betting hundreds of millions of dollars that AI will reduce costs, shorten timelines, and lead to new and better drugs. At the Forum on Monday, Exscientia founder and CEO Andrew Hopkins, formerly a professor at the University of Dundee in Scotland and a 10-year veteran of Pfizer, spoke about how AI can lead to improvements in drug development.