Opinion & analysis

Transforming Pharmaceutical R&D with Data

Ongoing pressures on drug pricing and reimbursement mean that current research and development (R&D) economics are unsustainable.  The process of discovering and developing a drug has not fundamentally changed for decades, and on average it still costs $2.6bn and takes over 10 years. Fortunately, tools are emerging to help improve R&D success rates. Most are built on better use of more kinds of data, including using artificial intelligence (AI) to process massive quantities of information that humans cannot manage. Some of these new tools promise cost and time savings of between 20–50%