55% of pharma companies use AI for product and service design

1. Next steps for the pharmaceutical industry 

Pharmaceutical companies have already integrated Artificial Intelligence into their day-to-day business: three out of four companies design their products and services, more specifically their medicines, with the help of AI. They also use it in industry-specific operations and in the areas of cybersecurity, marketing and systems. 

This has been revealed in the sectoral analysis of the Ascendant report by Minsait (Indra Group), which, under the title ‘AI: X-ray of a revolution in progress’, analyses its degree of adoption in private companies and public institutions. 

The same report highlights the specific operations where companies are focusing or will focus their efforts on the use of Artificial Intelligence, which include significantly improving the speed and accuracy of compound discovery, predicting results in clinical trials, optimising manufacturing processes and the intelligent management of the supply chain. 

In addition, 33% of the companies interviewed are already applying AI in disease analysis and 29% in drug development and manufacturing. Thus, AI acts as a calculator for medical professionals to predict whether a patient with diabetes will develop another disease or to detect whether a person with heart disease is getting worse. In drug manufacturing, the document mentions the installation of machine vision cameras for quality analysis, among other possibilities. 

On the other hand, the report considers four main dimensions to analyse the degree of maturity of pharmaceutical companies to adopt Artificial Intelligence, highlighting motivation and adoption. 

In the first case, organisations express operational excellence as their main objective: seven out of ten respondents seek to achieve greater efficiency in their operations as a key lever to improve their competitiveness. Two other motivations are to improve decision-making (34%) and to improve the experience of the customers and citizens with whom they interact (31%). In the case of adoption, the value chain areas with the greatest focus are industry-specific internal operations (65%) and the application of AI to risk management and cybersecurity (54%). 

In terms of barriers or factors slowing down the path to AI implementation, the paper cites a shortage of AI skills and talent (36%), a lack of strategic vision by senior management (35%) and uncertainty caused by a variable regulatory framework by geography and sector in the development and deployment phase (31%). 

Next steps for the pharmaceutical industry 

The pharmaceutical sector is a key driver of the European economy; it generates 300,000 million euros, contributes 175,000 million euros to the EU trade balance and leads the innovation chapter with 41,500 million euros invested. In Spain, exports have grown by 53% in 2023, reaching 27,000 million euros and consolidating the country as a benchmark in clinical research. 

The emergence of Artificial Intelligence has generated enormous expectations in the pharmaceutical field, where its ability to automate sophisticated and high value-added tasks is opening up unsuspected possibilities, according to the Ascendant report. According to the study's conclusions, AI is emerging as an essential tool to accelerate the development of new medicines, improve operational efficiency and respond to the sector's major challenges. 

‘Artificial Intelligence offers companies of all sizes the opportunity to increase their competitiveness and integrate solutions that not only transform products and services, but also optimise processes and improve strategic decision-making, revolutionising the way companies operate and being an ally in the evolution of pharmaceutical companies, a key economic player at European and national level,’ says Arancha Pérez-Navarro, Director of Consumer, Retail and Pharma at Minsait. 

‘In the next three years,’ she adds, ‘the sector intends to invest €8 billion to boost research and improve production processes, digitalisation and sustainability, as well as to promote global activities with technological and strategic content with which to face the exciting challenges of artificial intelligence‘. 

The fifth edition of Minsait's Ascendant Digital Maturity 2024 Report addresses the context and degree of adoption of Artificial Intelligence by companies and public administrations. To do so, it has analysed the information provided by more than 900 organisations in Spain and other countries from 15 different sectors of activity.