By Ganesh Nikam
Unlike all previous waves of IT and Digital Innovation, where different industries picked up the immense advantages of technology at different pace, AI adoption is altogether a different story. Practically all industries which were considered late adopters previously, showed up very early in the starting line and prepared with full throttle. The Bio-Pharma sector in India is one such early starter and AI is discussed and strategized from Board to Boiler level. Everybody is realizing that the rate of change of AI progress is very quick, and one cannot afford to miss or delay any piece of it.
All the significant companies in the Indian Bio-Pharma sector were also able to start incorporating AI quite early, as this time their internal IT and digital teams were well established and sufficiently mature to quickly understand and senior management is ready to make information technology as a critical element of their overall strategy. The priority areas where AI and Machine learning is being utilized and prioritized is Drug Discovery, Manufacturing Optimisation, Clinical Trials, Precision Medicine and Pharmacovigilance.
Drug discovery: AI can be used to analyze large datasets of biological and chemical information to identify potential drug candidates, predict their efficacy, and optimize their molecular structure.
Manufacturing optimization: AI can be used to optimize production processes, monitor quality control, and reduce waste in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.
Clinical trials: AI can be used to design more efficient and effective clinical trials by identifying patient cohorts, predicting response rates, and optimizing treatment protocols.
Precision medicine: AI can be used to identify subgroups of patients that are more likely to respond to specific treatments, based on their genomic or other biomarker data
Pharmacovigilance: AI can be used to monitor adverse drug reactions and detect potential safety issues early in the drug development process.
Depending on presence of Bio-Pharma companies in the overall value chain, the adoption of AI and ML is becoming quite penetrative
The overall impact on Jobs and responsibilities are two fold. One is that increasing hiring of pure data science, AI/ML resources as a part of the core team of each concerned department to help strategize, and implement AI/ML interventions. And the second is retraining of existing middle management resources on this new technology which is part of transformation of a data driven decision process and culture. So practically there is substantial increase in hiring of pure IT employees in the Bio-Pharma industry and preference of having Data knowledge or certifications in the resume of the existing core Bio-Pharma resources. Within few quarters, one will not be surprised to hear that all major Bio-Pharma companies are hiring CTOs and their elevation to right at the top of the decision-making body
Bio-Pharma companies have also initiated in collaboration with universities to incorporate Data Science, AI and ML into the curriculum of all related disciplines and conducting internal and paid training for existing resources. It also involves a lot of investment in AI tools and software and integrating them into the organization’s IT bloodline.
Future of this industry for the next decade will be driven by predictive and computation power of ever-increasing AI and ML algos and along with this, will also drive the discussion of ethics and morality aspects of the conflicts of medicine and mankind.
The author is Managing Director, CEO, Biojobz