Written by William Hirst • Published on 20th August 2024

AI in the sky 

In 2024, it’s trite to say that Generative AI will transform pharma. Executives, for the most part, understand the short-term impact this technology will have on our operational capabilities. However, outside of drug discovery, we’re still waiting to see its true potential.

As the AI bubble looks increasingly likely to burst, it’s key that we in pharma have the nerve to ensure that we ride the wave. Those companies that don’t have the necessary investments in place will find themselves in deep water when the hype dies down and interest starts to climb again. 

We must have faith in the promise of AI to transform our business operations as we approach the Trough of Disillusionment. We have a unique opportunity to streamline our opportunities and grant patients faster access to life-saving drugs. We should take it while we have the chance. 

Invest or digress

Our hesitancy to take up AI tools in the short term is in part because we tend to underestimate the difficulty of implementing AI programs across functions and overestimate the immediate value of Gen-AI tools. AI is not a magic bullet, but a technology like any other: a new capability that has clear potential for our future state, but that will be disruptive to our present state. For pharma, our ability to deliver results with AI is sure to be compromised in the short term by our comfortable but dated systems and working processes that are not ready to take on an AI upgrade. These problems run deep and won’t be resolved by the injection of a new tool, no matter how powerful and impressive it might be.

ChatGPT, the harbinger of our AI enthusiasm upon its release nearly two years ago, is partly to blame for our naivety. Research by Microsoft suggests that around 75% of computer workers use generative AI regularly, and there is no doubt that Gen-AI has significant, immediate results when we use it for basic creative tasks like drafting emails and summarising long passages of text. But using AI for individual tasks on an easy-to-use platform that is set up to be as user-friendly as possible is very different to using it for more complex business operations. In pharma, we still lack data cohesion and the appropriate ‘plumbing’ to allow us to shift our operations into a format that AI is able to work with. In other words, ChatGPT has duped us into thinking that we can do the same with all sorts of business operations. The reality is different.

The quiet revolution

To get ahead, we should be considering the implementation of AI carefully and soberly, as we should any new technology. Although it is difficult to put a definitive finger on where AI is in the Gartner hype-cycle, the consensus is that we’re somewhere near the Peak of Inflated Expectations at this point in 2024. Soon, we’ll be plummeting into the Trough of Disillusionment. The slump is coming, but we must have the courage to ride it out—the benefits of an effective deployment of AI tools are too good to miss—but this won’t be easy. Executives expect fast, measurable returns from expensive programs, and we’re bound to have teething problems in the early stages. Furthermore, the real benefits of AI are unlikely to look like the headline breakthroughs we see looking down from the Peak of Inflated Expectations. Instead, progress will come in smaller, incremental alterations to our business processes.

Crucially, it will be the changes that come before AI is introduced that will mark the difference between successful and unsuccessful AI programs. It is here that we are behind, but also here that we have the immediate opportunity to make progress. Attaining meaningful value requires a quiet revolution in our attitude to operations that can then generate a comprehensive vision of what we can do with AI tools. This revolution will require the commitment from whole teams, as well as individual team members, to determine what it is we’re trying to achieve and how we can go about attaining it.

This is a hard ask—pharma is famously resistant to change, and we are so often debilitated by so-called ‘legacy mindsets’. It will require leadership, vision and disruption to climb out of the Trough of Disillusionment. Pharmageddon is the only event in our industry that has those three ingredients in bucketloads. Register and find out more here.