Fact of the Week: Artificial Intelligence Can Save Pharmaceutical Companies Almost $54 Billion in R&D Costs Each Year

Source: Lisa George, “How Can Artificial Intelligence Facilitate New Drug Research and Development?,” Pharmiweb, November 2020.

Commentary: Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently being used in seven areas of new drug development, from discovery to screening to optimization. Compared with traditional methods, AI can reduce the time it takes to synthesize and screen new drugs by 40 percent to 50 percent, reducing costs in those parts of the research process by as much as $26 billion annually. This is done by using machine and deep learning to simulate drug properties and select the most effective compounds. In the clinical research phase, AI can cut costs by $28 billion per year, and reduce the phase’s length by half or more. AI does this by automating manual tasks and performing rapid statistical analysis to improve clinical research efficiency. The increasing use of AI in the pharmaceutical industry will not only reduce costs, but enable more effective drugs to be created more quickly, boosting medical innovations and leading to a healthier world.