The world’s population is increasing at a massive pace, and this is one of the reasons that there is an increasing demand for drugs. However, the tragic part of the picture is that the pharmaceutical industry has not experienced massive innovation and growth.
As per, Dr. Kees de Joncheere from the World Health Organization, the health sector has been providing good medicines, but the limitations are there as far as innovation is concerned. Secondly, there have been no significant achievements in the pharma industry for quite some time. However, the scenario has started to change for the past few years.
The role of biotech companies in innovation
Now, apparently, it seems that the biotech companies will spearhead the innovation. When we talk about biotech companies, then they are referred to as large pharmaceutical companies that are bound to make an impact.
Once the biotech companies introduce the element of innovation, then the industry is surely going to experience disintegration. There will be more focus on the balance of power among the stakeholders, and there will be more focus on personalized medicines also.
The industry-wide disintegration will take place because of the advancements in technology. What the large pharma industries will do is that they will outsource processes for drug discovery to the smaller companies.
The reason is that biotech companies will be more focused on bigger profits.
How biotech industries are making use of artificial intelligence
The Biotech companies will make use of artificial intelligence for drug discovery and medical diagnostics. The interesting part is that most of the biotech companies have already started to incorporate the concept of artificial intelligence.
If we look at the records of 2017, then you will come across an important fact. Way back in 2017 Genentech, who is a member of Roche group announced its collaboration with the GNS healthcare.
The main objective of the collaboration was to focus on cancer therapy. The objective of these companies is to make use of machine learning for converting patient data into computer models. Now, once this machine data get converted, then it becomes easier to identify patients who are novel targets for cancer therapy.
Roche had started executing its plans way back in 2014. It acquired a biotech company by the name of Bina Technologies. What makes Bina Technologies stand out is that it targets personalized medicine sector. Roche provided a platform to Bina technologies for large-scale genome sequencing.
Pfizer is yet another pharmaceutical that made an impact. It was way back in 2016 that IBM announced that Pfizer will be utilizing Watson for Drug Discovery cloud-based platform. The objective of this collaboration was also to target cancer therapies.
IBM and Pfizer had one aim. They wanted researchers to discover new targets. Watson for Drug Discovery offered a variety of features to the users. The platform offered the facility to the users to analyze the private data such as the lab reports.
Plus, the platform also helped the users in dynamic visualizations. Novartis is yet another big name in the pharma industry. In 2017, Novartis also announced its collaboration with IBM Watson Health.
The objective of the collaboration was to improve health outcomes. What the collaborators wanted to do was to develop cognitive solutions using real-time data to explore treatment options for breast cancer.
It seems that artificial intelligence is here to stay, and biotech companies will leave no stone unturned to use AI for coming up with innovative medical solutions for different diseases. Apparently, it seems that 2019 is also going to be a happening year for AI and Biotech companies.
