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

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. Exscientia, formed in 2012, uses AI-driven systems to automate drug design while still "mimicking human creativity," says Hopkins.