Pharma Giants Turn to AI for Clinical Trials Process

Major pharmaceutical companies increasingly turn to artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline patient selection for clinical trials and reduce the number of participants required, potentially speeding up drug development and saving significant financial resources. Human studies are the most expensive and time-consuming aspect of drug development, requiring years of patient recruitment and testing to complete.

From drug discovery to completion, this process can cost more than a billion dollars. Pharmaceutical companies have been experimenting with AI for years, hoping to use it to discover new drugs. Some AI-identified compounds are now in the development stage, though these ventures will take years to materialize. Insights gained from Reuters interviews with numerous pharmaceutical company executives, drug regulators, public health experts, and AI companies indicate that AI technology increasingly plays a significant role in human drug trials.

Companies such as Amgen, Bayer, and Novartis use AI to identify potential trial patients by analyzing massive amounts of public health records, prescription data, medical insurance claims, and internal data. In some cases, this approach has cut patient enrollment time in half. According to Jeffrey Morgan, managing director at Deloitte, AI integration has progressed beyond the experimental stage but hasn't yet permeated every aspect of drug development. From 2016 to 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received approximately 300 applications incorporating AI or machine learning in drug development. Over 90% of these applications were submitted in the last two years, with the majority involving AI use during the clinical development stage.