2020 saw several milestones for the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in pharma, including the entry of the first AI-designed molecule in clinical trials. While digital pathology and chemistry/small molecule-oriented AI applications have already found their way into mainstream news, we would like to share with you an outlook on Natural language processing (NLP) – An AI tool to cash-in the ‘big-text’ in life sciences.

Pharma has seen an explosion in terms of data. PubMed has more than 30 million citations, clinicaltrialgov has about 350,000+ studies registered, millions of EHRs, and numerous other sources like KEGG, patient forums, etc. that are rich sources of text data, the surface of which has barely been scratched in terms of extracting insights. How do we use all this information??

NLP-based solutions provide the ability to read or parse human language to process and understand a large amount of unstructured text across the literature and transform them into structured and actionable insights. 

60+ Pharma/Biotech companies, including top-20, have already adopted NLP-based solutions for at least one application. NLP can catalyze a range of applications within a fraction of cost and time:  

• Quick data mining and literature search for beginning a project
• Competitive analysis for the regulatory, patent, and market insights
• Drug discovery: target identification, repurposing, quick literature digest etc. 
• Clinical trials: design clinical trial protocols or match patients to site/trials swiftly
• Pharmacovigilance & real-world data analyses: Automated monitoring of reports, literature, and social media for new signals or insights

Considering the evolution of NLP landscape, we believe it is timely for pharma to consider prudent strategies anchored around NLP-based solutions to transform key business units and drug discovery R&D. However, critical considerations are required to assess and identify the relevant platforms for the specific business needs.

Our in-depth understanding of the NLP space and state-of-the-art technologies allows us to identify and evaluate appropriate partnership/investment opportunities customized to your needs. We would be delighted to share our insights and identify potential areas where AI/NLP can be deployed to set the foundation for your AI strategy.

Please download the outlook on Natural language processing (NLP), an AI tool to cash-in the ‘big-text’ in life sciences.