Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a fast emerging technology, dealing with the development and study of intelligent machines and software, which is becoming increasingly sophisticated over the last decade, and it is possible to employ it in a variety of new fields. AI might also be applied to support the global drug safety and pharmacovigilance (PV) industry. However, the impact it could have is not yet entirely clear.
What is pharmacovigilance (drug safety)? It is the field of science that monitors, detects, and strives to prevent adverse drug reactions (ADR). This is very important, as it is the field that identifies whether new and existing medications and drugs might have negative side effects and might be unsafe. Pharmacovigilance begins during the development process, the clinical trials, and continues once the drug has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Traditionally, pharmacovigilance is done through manual data sorting but the currently existing volumes of data, patient diversity, increased drug interactions, and more push the boundaries of the field (1).
The pharmacovigilance industry has a growing need to process the increasing amounts of data it receives from individual case safety reports (ICSRs). If there is more data, assistive technologies, such as AI, could help improve the processing and the analysis of said data. However, this could significantly change the way in which drug safety professionals work and how their career develops. Pharmacovigilance has not changed significantly in the past decades, but this could be a big change. AI could provide opportunities for professionals to focus on valuable work for higher efficiency and accuracy, and for better decision-making. An ongoing concern is that the use of the AI could make people obsolete and replace humans eventually, especially with the use of machine learning that allows the AI to learn, adapt, and improve on its own (2).
The question of how obsolete drug safety professionals would become years after the widespread implementation of an AI remains. Some professionals believe it would lead to job losses, while others suggests it would help create new jobs. However, it is likely to change the landscape of pharmacovigilance. If the AI is used mainly for doing the basic work, while leaving the more difficult, nuanced processes to people, it could significantly improve the field and lead to faster and better results (2).
Healthcare sectors are currently using AI technology to make a better and faster analysis than humans. There have been experiments showing that machine learning can be applied to the field of medicine, identification of specific types of data, and other elements with great success. An AI can be utilized for complex tasks that involve existing datasets, and it is likely to have a wide variety of applications. An AI can also be trained to do many things, and the technology is there today, so this matter is not only a theoretical one (3). Since medical care supplies and healthcare equipment supplies are becoming more and more important, medical equipment supply companies and medical supplies companies pay more and more attention on the quality and logistics on medicine.
According to a report by the Pharmavoice suggests that over 50% of pharmaceutical executives expect AI to be widely adopted by 2025. AI-based solutions are likely to produce significantly more revenue in the following years, rising to $2.1 billion by 2022. Other reports suggest that the U.S. AI market in healthcare will exceed $10 billion by 2024. The COVID pandemic, in particular, has propelled the...
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