Building trust between AI and pharma industry is vital for success

The pharmaceutical industry is on the cusp of an artificially intelligent wave that promises enormous opportunities, but also immense challenges. The onset of artificial intelligence (AI) in the modern world has led to the prophesying of a seismic shift whereby many of the jobs we are familiar with today will disappear in favour of algorithms and robots. In the area of pharma, AI promises not only to overhaul how the industry produces and designs medication, but could also lead to the discovery of whole new medication in the space of a few hours – discoveries that would take a human years. To take just one recent example, scientists at the University of Cambridge announced that, with the help of an AI-powered robot called Eve, they were able to identify a possible antimalarial drug found in a common toothpaste ingredient. While this is just an example of what relatively small-scale research can do, think about the potential for AI in the vast, mega-pharma corporations with much greater resources at their disposal. One of those keen to understand how AI can make a real impact in pharma is Dr Muhammed Ali, MSD International's executive director for healthcare solutions strategy across Europe and Canada in its commercial and operations team.