In today’s age of advancement in medicine, especially during covid times, the use of Artificial Intelligence has become paramount. Not only it comes with a lot of benefits for the healthcare industry but it also gives an edge of accuracy in the drug delivery systems.
One of the challenges that the pharmaceutical industry is facing is in sustaining the drug development programmes because of increased R&D costs and reduced efficiency. The way new drugs (of all types) are developed through the current process of clinical trials can take several years and can also cost huge money. Merck Group article indicates that the cost of bringing a new drug to market is more than 2.5 BN $.
Even if the new drug shows positive results in the lab testing, it may fail during clinical trials. Speeding this process & making the overall approach more cost-effective would have an enormous effect on healthcare and life on this planet.
Machine learning and other technologies are expected to make this hunt more effective. There has been a remarkable growth in the availability of large data sets resulting in a lot of development in advanced algorithms. This has majorly helped in a lot of improvements in machine learning schematics. This has helped to bring about ‘narrow AI’, which focuses on specific tasks – one of these could be associated with the drug development process.
Also Read:Â The Future of AI in Medicine and Healthcare
The manual analysis of large datasets to identify potential new drug is complex, time-consuming. AI algorithms can speed this process up. Now with the help of AI-driven solutions, there is a very high degree of probability of early-stage drug recovery.
The survey indicates that the Drug discovery applications account for over 35% of market share & could exceed USD 4 billion in revenue by 2024.
Various areas where A.I. is being used or planned to be used are:
- Drug target identification
- Drug discovery
- Dealing with patient, clinical and biomedical data
- Multitarget drug discovery approach
- Repurposing drugs
- Development of biomarkers
- Analysing content patents
During Feb’20, the first non-man-made drug molecule, DSP-1181, entered Phase 1 clinical trials. The scientists are convinced that this is by far the last non-man made drug to reach this stage. Even in the present situation, multiple companies are targeting the coronavirus with AI-powered technology.
Comparing the speed, the cost involved in the new drug development process with the actual time when the vaccine is required (it was a few months back probably), AI-powered technology appears to be the best bet.
