Artificial Intelligence (AI) will affect every part of life in the coming years. In the business world, companies are looking at BOT technology to drive change. AI will transform everything from talking with customers to handling warehouse tasks. The AI healthcare market alone may grow to reach $6.6 billion by 2021. The same research predicts key clinical AI applications could save $150 billion in US health care costs by 2026. BOTs in the pharmaceutical industry will power the change.
The pharmaceutical industry will see the tremendous impact from this technology shift. A study from Emerj surveyed healthcare industry executives already using AI. Fifty percent expect broad scale adoption by 2025. Also, specific AI applications targeting “chronic conditions.” According to the CDC, 50 percent of Americans currently suffer from a least one chronic condition. That means AI will affect pharmaceutical treatments for half the population. There’s no doubt that AI adoption will radically transform the pharmaceutical industry. How can the pharmaceutical industry use this trend to their advantage?
Why the Pharmaceutical Industry Needs to Adapt
AI, including BOT technology, is a trend that pharmaceutical companies must join or get left behind. It’s no secret that current pharma business models aren’t strong enough. In fact, one economic analysis says it’s on the “brink of terminal decline.” Here’s why. Currently, pharma relies on innovation to create value, yielding customer benefits. Innovation leads to growth and value, which in turn lead to positive ROI. That growth leads to revenue that goes back into research and development (R&D), and the cycle begins again. As healthcare continues to improve the standard of care, the harder and more expensive it becomes to continue to improve.
The result for pharma companies is that they continue to invest in innovation, but get diminishing value for patients. It’s going to get harder and harder to keep up with improvements and stay profitable. As profits decline, R&D budgets do too. Less money is available for investment into R&D, so significant innovation declines too. Pharma companies can’t sustain this cycle forever.
Four Ways BOTs Will Revolutionize Pharma
AI has the potential to create efficiencies and increase productivity. It can also provide better customer service and perform mundane activities. That means revenue-generating staff can focus on what they do best. A report from McKinsey estimates that big data and machine learning have the potential to generate up to $100 billion in the medical and pharma industries each year. How? The report listed, “better decision-making, optimized innovation, improved efficiency of research/clinical trials, and new tool creation for physicians, consumers, insurers, and regulators.” Here are four ways AI, specifically the use of BOTs, will help improve pharma’s business model.
1. Speed Up Drug Discovery
Developing a new treatment averages a $2.6 billion price tag and can take about 12 years. That includes money spent on multiple failed trials. It also includes time wasted searching for candidates, monitoring, and reporting. Implementing BOT technology that combines Machine Learning with Fundamental Meaning can speed up the timeline. BOTs also help increase the likelihood of success during the trial process. The initial screening of drug compounds to the predicted success rate of participants with certain biological factors involves a lot of information. BOTs have the ability to crunch mounds of data to come with the absolute best trial components. “We are turning the drug-discovery paradigm upside down by using patient-driven biology and data to derive more-predictive hypotheses, rather than the traditional trial-and-error approach,” said one researcher in a Nature magazine article. BOT technology can comb through mountains of data to identify candidates for trial. AI uses advanced predictive analytics to both speed up the trial process and reduce costs.
2. Improve Customer Service
One report found that poor customer service is costing businesses more than $75 billion a year. That’s a huge jump from the 2016 report, which estimated a $13 billion annual loss. Customers have changed the way they want to interact with companies. Sixty-six percent now prefer to communicate via messaging apps. Pharma companies can use chatbots or User Interfaces (UI) to transform the user experience. Bots can use data in context, leverage short and long-term memory, analyze user sentiment and mimic human conversation. Some areas where pharma could use this technology are:
- benefits verification support,
- user registration and savings card distribution,
- basic customer support, and
- medication and refill reminders.
3. Standardize Warehouse Efficiency
Customers aren’t the only ones that can benefit from BOT support. The primary method of improving productivity in any warehouse is streamlining processes. Use a virtual assistant BOT to assist and guide employees using vocal commands when picking batches. This keeps workflow consistent and reduces downtime. Using AI technology in a pharma warehouse can also:
- eliminate paperwork,
- improve communication between team members, and
- decrease approval waiting periods.
BOTs go everywhere employees go since the technology functions through the cloud on AWS. This elevates the effectiveness of tools they already use, such as SMS, mobile, web, and messaging platforms. Employees can answer questions instantly with a BOT’s access to data. They can execute complex workflows that may involve other employees or not. They can enter data without filling out a long form. BOTs enable employees to can get real-time reports and status updates right from their app.
4. Create Data-based Innovations
BOT technology can also drive faster innovation. It’s all about combing massive amounts of data and figuring out the right care for the right patients at the right time. BOTs can analyze big data to understand what diseases a medication will affect the most. BOTs can also pinpoint which specific patient populations might benefit.
Learn more about how BOTs can transform the pharmaceutical industry at a One-Day Fiori Discovery Session. Fiori offers an innovative User Experience (UX) for the SAP software. It applies modern principles of design that offer unique responsiveness.
Join a UI_UX Design Thinking Session to explore the impact of Fiori on your business. Identify areas for “Fiorization” and learn how to shorten time to deploy using prepackaged apps. Discuss viable UI_UX engagements. Share your top five use cases. Assess feasibility and viability with business stakeholders. Identify key value drivers and POC opportunities. Contact us at Crave InfoTech to learn more.