Healthcare and life science organizations are moving towards digital transformation to decrease the cost of care, improve collaboration, make data-driven clinical and operational decisions, and enable faster development of new therapeutics and treatment paths. Identifying the right cloud technology to reach these goals can be challenging, and many organizations lack the internal resourcing and expertise to assess, build, and deploy their own solutions. As a highly regulated and complex industry, various global compliance requirements can further complicate healthcare and life science organizations' moves to implement digital initiatives. To help customers accelerate their transformation, we are introducing AWS for Health, an offering of curated AWS services and AWS Partner Network solutions used by thousands of healthcare and life sciences customers globally. AWS for Health provides proven and easily accessible capabilities that help organizations increase the pace of innovation, unlock the potential of health data, and develop more personalized approaches to therapeutic development and care.

This week, we have launched the first in a series of reports on artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential impact in driving the digital transformation of biopharma. This overview report, Intelligent biopharma: Forging the links across the value chain, explores the challenges and opportunities in AI adoption and the potential ways that AI might impact the different segments of the biopharma value chain (see Figure 1).1 The pace and scale of medical and scientific innovation, together with increasing competition, lengthening R&D cycle times, shorter time in market, expiring patents, declining peak sales, pressure around reimbursement and mounting regulatory scrutiny are challenging the existing biopharma business and operating models. These challenges have also had a massively negative impact on the expected return on investment that large biopharma companies expect to achieve from their late-stage pipelines. Consequently, companies are looking to digital transformation as a key differentiator and essential part of their change management strategy. AI technologies are some of the most anticipated of these digital technologies.

The pace and scale of medical and scientific innovation is transforming the biopharma industry. The need for better patient engagement and experience is spurring new business models. Data generated, captured, analysed and used in real time by innovative medical devices is biopharma's new currency. A key differentiator for companies is the extent to which they are able to generate insights and evidence from multiple data sources. Consequently, digital transformation is a strategic imperative. This report outlines how artificial intelligence-enabled technologies will impact the biopharma value chain and accelerate biopharma's digital transformation. Although there is a high level of innovation in the industry, biopharma companies are facing a complex and challenging environment due to increased competition and R&D cycle times, shorter time in market, expiring patents, declining peak sales, pressure around reimbursement and mounting regulatory scrutiny. As we have shown in our series of reports on'Measuring the return from pharmaceutical innovation', these factors are contributing to an alarming decline in the projected return on investment that large biopharma companies might expect to achieve from their late-stage pipelines, threatening their long-term futures.1 Digital transformation could provide a lifeline to biopharma research and development (R&D) and help reverse this trend. Digital transformation will also impact beyond R&D, as companies look to improve their operational performance, productivity, efficiency and cost-effectiveness across the entire biopharma value chain (see figure 1). Digital transformation will also impact business models, the development of new products and services, and how companies engage with health care professionals, patients and other customers. Ultimately, digital transformation is the next step in the evolution of biopharma companies.