Survey Finds Industry Leaders Believe AI Development is Behind

The Pistoia Alliance, a global not-for-profit alliance, announced results of a survey of 229 life science professionals. The survey indicated that the majority (72%) believe their sector is lagging behind other industries in its AI development.

The survey found adoption of AI is high, with more than two thirds (69%) of companies using AI, machine learning, deep learning, and chatbots; an increase from when the same question was asked last September, where under half (44%) of respondents were using or experimenting with AI. A further 19% of respondents signaled that they plan to use AI within the next 12 months, with just 12% of life science professionals not using AI at all. Of those currently using AI in their organizations, approximately a fifth (21%) felt that their projects were not yet providing meaningful outcomes, and 21% ‘didn’t know’ if projects were delivering meaningful outcomes. The Pistoia Alliance believes collaboration between interested parties will be essential in ensuring AI projects lead to results that positively impact R&D.

Additionally, The Pistoia Alliance has launched its Centre of Excellence for AI in Life Sciences to accelerate the successful use of AI. The Centre of Excellence aims to help facilitate these collaborations by allowing companies to share their expertise and knowledge, in addition to holding events that help organizations build prototypes and pilots that prove the value of AI.

The survey of 229 senior pharmaceutical and life science leaders was conducted via webinar in May 2018. For information and slides from the webinars, see here.