By Michael Scott
The Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical multinational, AstraZeneca revealed in its Monday, November 20 announcement establishing a digital health venture named Evinova.
The Cambridge-headquartered drug giant indicated that Evinova would operate autonomously within the AstraZeneca ecosystem. The Monday announcement illustrated that Evinova targets leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) in designing clinical studies, automating cost calculations, and ascertaining the feasibility of drug testing.
AI to Accelerate Future Medicine Development
The science-led biopharmaceutical company emphasized the viability of integrating digital solutions in medicine development. In particular, AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot expressed optimism in leveraging digital solutions to accelerate medicine development.
Soriot profiled Evinova as a platform that will integrate scientific expertise and existing AI-enabled digital technologies to advance patient care. In particular, AstraZeneca’s chief considers Evinova’s establishment timely to tap into the AI-enabled digital technologies in creating opportunities to drive healthcare transformation.
Besides reduced carbon emissions, Soriot believes that Evinova combines scientific expertise with AI-enabled digital solutions to improve patient care fundamentally. The statement identified digital health solutions to feature wearable well-being detector devices, telemedicine, remote care via mobile-based applications, augmented and virtual reality.
The Monday announcement defined digital health as involving scientific-based technologies with support applications uniquely designed to foster healthcare delivery and treatment outcomes. As such, Evinova constitutes a digital health venture to enhance the overall healthcare systems’ efficiency.
AstraZeneca projected the digital health market to realize wild growth to realize a $900 billion value by 2032. Further, the Cambridge Biomedical Campus-based multinational predicted that the accelerated growth in digital health would significantly reduce healthcare costs.
AstraZeneca’s Digital Health Venture Taps AI to Conduct Clinical Trials
Soriot submitted that the time and expense involved in conducting clinical trials is a hindrance responsible for nearly 80% of failed projects. AstraZeneca’s executive noted that it takes seven years to start and secure final approval for clinical trials.
The AstraZeneca CEO disclosed that Evinova’s initial focus is designing and running the clinical trials. The French-born Australian executive disclosed that besides AstraZeneca, Evinova is receiving support from North Carolian-headquartered clinical research entities Parexel and Fortrea.
The creation of Evinova is timely, given the vast investments undertaken across artificial intelligence by leading tech giants. Since the unveiled ChatGPT by OpenAI, AI quickly became mainstream across various sectors, including defense, education, and medicine. As such, various tech giants, including Amazon, Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, have since invested heavily in AI.
The AstraZeneca announcement portrayed optimism that Evinova will tap AI to speed up the clinical trial process by assisting the teams in designing the studies. Also, AI will help automate cost calculations and explore the feasibility of the clinical trial relative to the historical and regional data.
Evinova to Integrate AI-Enabled and Evidence-Led Digital Health Solutions
AstraZeneca disclosed that using AI would help in expediting the decision-making process. Such collaborates with the account conveyed by Microsoft’s Peter Lee, who heads the Research and Incubations. In his address at the Healthy Longevity Global Innovator Summit held in October, Lee admitted GPT-4 facilitated the family in managing the elderly father’s health.
Also, Lee hailed the updated version of ChatGPT as having helped explain the complex medical issues that triggered heated arguments in the family. He admitted that the capability of GPT to offer guidance cooled the temperatures to restore family harmony.
Evinova is banking on the admission that AI-enabled digital health solutions were viable to roll out. A recent study published in the International Journal of Nature suggested the capability to utilize AI models in diagnosing and removing tumors attacking the central nervous system (CNS).
Similarly, a British biotech startup, Etcembly, disclosed the utilization of generative AI in its attempts to design a novel immunotherapy applicable to treating cancer cells.
Evinova president Cristina Duran hailed the creation of the digital health venture as uniquely placed to offer transformative health solutions. The executive observed that Evinova would tap the proven experience to deliver science-based yet evidence-based and human experience-driven health solutions. Such will ultimately improve the patient experience and outcomes.
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