Pharma and life sciences executives worldwide are generally optimistic about the pharmaceutical industry’s prospects through the end of 2025, with 68% saying they anticipate a revenue boost, in a survey by Deloitte U.S. Center for Health Solutions. Nevertheless, the industry faces some challenges around regulatory requirements and protracted drug development processes. Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a key role in addressing them.
AI has emerged as a way to accelerate new drug development, approval, and manufacturing. Getting a new medication from concept to reality is a costly, time-consuming endeavor. Typically, it takes at least 10 years and an estimated $2 billion to develop a new drug.
Researching and testing a drug requires a complex process involving data analytics, lab work, clinical trials, and regulatory approval. In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration approval process can add several years to the time it takes to bring a new drug to market. With the help of AI, this process can be shortened, potentially enabling pharmaceutical companies to reduce their time to market by one to four years.
AI cuts time and cost in pharma research
Creating a new medication requires sifting through and analyzing massive datasets with information on diseases and health conditions, as well as the chemical ingredients that may provide effective treatment. By training AI models on the data, researchers can accelerate results that predict the efficacy and safety of drug compounds.
AI-driven predictive analytics helps determine how molecules in compounds interact with biological targets, accelerating the process of determining which compounds are most likely to succeed in treating medical conditions. AI can also determine early in the process when certain compounds aren’t going to work, saving researchers the time and effort to test them.
An obvious benefit of accelerating drug development is making medications available more quickly to patients. The result is a better quality of life for patients, and, in some cases, it saves lives. Another benefit is cost savings. For one thing, compressing the development process drives down costs and minimizes patent cliff for pharmaceutical companies. For another, the cost of personalized medicine also drops. AI makes it easier to tailor treatment based on a patient’s medical condition and genetic makeup, increasing the chances of a positive outcome.
AI Indirect benefits to the pharma industry
AI use cases aren’t confined to drug development. AI can play a critical role in pharmaceutical manufacturing by preventing downtime through predictive maintenance of equipment. Using AI to analyze data collected from production and electrical systems enables technicians to identify problems and address them before causing downtime. This not only raises manufacturing output but also helps reduce operational costs.
Manufacturers in all industries, including pharmaceuticals, are under pressure to repatriate production to the U.S. Companies such as Eli Lilly, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson are boosting U.S. production. U.S. manufacturing and labor costs are higher than in other countries, but with the help of AI, manufacturers can automate processes and move towards a proactive plant to optimize operations, improve product quality, and enhance efficiency.
Modular data center solutions enable AI
Schneider Electric is poised to assist the pharmaceutical sector in implementing power, cooling and physical infrastructure to support AI workloads. Schneider’s AI-ready modular data center solutions can be deployed near labs, manufacturing sites and R&D centers, ensuring power and data compliance and reliability. Prefabricated modular data centers provide all the infrastructure, compute, power, and cooling necessary for AI model training, inference, or deployment.
Modular Data Center solutions are available in three iterations – Emerging, Growth, and Advanced – and are designed to grow with your needs. Schneider Electric also introduced a new Galaxy UPS series designed specifically to help protect AI workloads that fluctuate dramatically in power use. By leveraging these solutions, pharmaceutical companies can accelerate their AI implementations and help change the lives of the people who need their medications.
Learn more about our modular data center and micro data center options to help your organization scale and leverage the benefits of AI in the pharmaceutical industry.
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