Tech I’d like to see: AI to shorten drug development, approval

During a crisis like Covid–19, AI application in R&D and drug regulatory processes assumes far greater importance. Even though there is rapid data explosion in R&D, pharma companies have not been able to leverage all of this new data to its potential for effective decision making. The need of the hour is to take advantage of the opportunities to generate value by deriving insights from this “dark” data (eg, data from real–world evidence (RWE)/ real-world data (RWD), secondary research data, data from patient interactions like patient services, data from public sources about regulatory submissions/ pathways). This will have far reaching implications for companies in areas including early approvals for new drugs, identifying right disease characteristics to streamline research and clinical trials, using NLP for actionable insights from patient perception and usage of drugs, developing a smart regulatory intelligence platform and developing an optimal submission pathway for drug approvals across various regulatory guidelines in different countries.