Big pharma is warming to the potential of AI

PAUL HUDSONAIAIGSKAI. AI, boss of Sanofi, is brandishing an iPhone. He is keen to show off the French drugmaker’s new artificial-intelligence () app, plai. It draws on more than 1bn data points to provide “snackable” information, from warnings about low stocks of a drug to questions for a meeting with an ad agency or suggestions to set up clinical-trial sites that could expedite drug approvals. Like Netflix recommendations, plai delivers “nudges”, as Mr Hudson calls them, that are useful at that moment in time. He jokes that plai broke even in about four hours, and says the cost is “peanuts” compared with the $300m-400m that big consultancies charge for a project to curate a big company’s data. One in ten of Sanofi’s 80,000 staff uses it every day. is not new in drugmaking. Biotech firms have been tinkering with it for years. Now interest from big pharma is growing. Last year Emma Walmsley, chief executive of , said it could improve the productivity of research and development, the industry’s most profound challenge. Moderna recently described itself as “laser-focused” on Sanofi is“all in”. Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, reckons that within a decade the pharmaceutical industry may be spending $50bn a year on to speed up drug development.