Natalie DiMambro, VP product commercialisation and training, Within3, explores the technologies and trends that are causing leaders to redefine current practices and invest more heavily in innovation to stay ahead of the curve in 2023.
Key insights:
- Covid-19, climate change, and the swift evolution of AI have changed the playing field, and life science companies must modernise and digitise in order to keep up.
- Pharma companies must confront clinical trial enrolment. Nearly 85% of trials are delayed due to enrolment issues, combined with low trial retention rates.
- Virtual asynchronous engagement would save patients hours of travel time and inconvenience.
- Increasing diversity is firmly on the agenda for 2023, with 61% of pharmaceutical companies saying they have concrete goals to enhance diversity in clinical trials.
This year, many factors will influence the life science industry, forcing leaders to re-evaluate current practices and invest more heavily in innovation. Covid-19, climate change, and the swift evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) have changed the playing field, and life science companies must modernise and digitise in order to keep up.
The facts of AI adoption
The pharma industry as a whole spends roughly $100 billion on R&D annually. Firms are always looking for ways to bring this cost down, whether it be prudently picking mergers and acquisitions with agile biotechs to speed up the process, or, increasingly investing in AI.
In 2023, AI has the potential to save pharma companies tens of millions by helping medical affairs teams to identify and introduce more efficient alternatives to current processes. The pharmaceutical industry’s increasing reliance on AI in drug discovery is evident in its spending trajectory – it’s reported that life science spending for AI will reach $3 billion by 2025.
Furthermore, AI-based discovery alliances between pharmaceutical companies and AI start-ups have increased from just 10 in 2015 to 105 in 2021. With just 10% of contenders ever making it to clinical development, AI could be a major part of the solution to such a low success rate.
Pharma’s increasing interest in AI was accelerated by the digitisation seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, and 82% of industry leaders expect this to continue at a rapid pace. Pharma companies must act swiftly and strategically in order to stay ahead of the competition as the industry navigates this digital revolution.
Focusing on efficiency
A major inefficiency that pharma companies must confront in 2023 is clinical trial enrolment. Nearly 85% of trials are delayed due to enrolment issues, and while this can depend upon the type of trial, there are significant hurdles for life science companies to overcome. The challenges don’t end there – rather, once patients are enroled, trial retention rates are quite poor. Statistics show that 30% of patients drop out of trials due to negative non-clinical experiences. On top of this, only 5-10% of eligible patients are aware of studies available to them and there is an estimated $800 billion loss in value each year for clinical trials as 19% of them end early due to lack of participation.
To help with both enrolment and retention rates, life science companies must look towards decentralised clinical trials. Implementing this technology will allow trials to become more patient-centric, making it easier for patients to enrol and continue participation until the study concludes.
Investing in diversity
Increasing diversity is firmly on the agenda for 2023, with 61% of pharmaceutical companies saying they have concrete goals to enhance diversity in clinical trials, addressing severe underrepresentation of women, the elderly, and people of colour. Despite the fact that people of colour make up 39% of the US population, only 2-16% of patients in trials are represented from this demographic.
While there are many actions pharma companies must take to rectify this, technology can help drive better diversity within trials. The technologies that life science companies can adopt to help remove barriers of participation include AI as well as social listening and virtual asynchronous engagement. AI-powered natural language processing helps trial teams more quickly identify areas of concern or trending topics, and, social listening tools monitor social media platforms to gather information on key demographics or discover new voices.
Virtual asynchronous engagement saves patients hours of travel time and inconvenience by allowing them to participate in some aspects of trials in a place convenient and comfortable for them.
Improving diversity in clinical trials is the right thing to do, but in an increasingly competitive market, many companies find that more diversity increases revenue from innovation by 45%. Ensuring that patient populations are accurately represented allows for medicines to be properly studied in the right groups, creating safer drugs for patients and resulting in more useful learnings for pharmaceutical companies.
Conclusion
As 2023 brings about the age of AI, digitalisation, and increasingly expensive trials and R&D, life science companies must implement the right technologies in the right places and invest in the various avenues of success in order to stay ahead of the curve.