The Future of Medicine: AI, Genomics and Real-World Data Transforming the Pharmaceutical Industry

Pharmaceutical industry development has been transformed drastically since the days of the traditional apothecaries to a highly advanced research based industry which is dominated by synthetic chemistry, biotechnology industry and mass production. It is a historical development of the industry looking at the main milestones which included the emergence of synthetic drugs, antibiotics, and recombinant technologies as well as development of strict regulatory environments. Even in the wake of incredible advancements, classical drug development has been marred by expensive prices, long time and worryingly high failure rates, significantly because of low translatability between preclinical models and humans, inadequate patient stratification, and a one-size-fits-all paradigm.
The chapter looks at the advent of digital health technologies, such as wearables, telemedicine, AI-driven diagnostics, and decentralized trials, as potential enabling factors of change. It offers an in-depth summary of the convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), genomics, and Real-World Data (RWD) which can be used in a synergistic manner and are changing target identification and their selection, drug design, clinical development, and even the generation of post-approval evidence. Such data-driven methods hold promise to be more precise, efficient, and more individualized in medicine.
The significance of this change to a data driven form of healthcare is that it will help reduce attrition rates, increase innovation, and better patient outcomes and provide the opportunity to deliver care based on value. But to achieve the benefits, it is necessary to address the endemic issues of data quality, interoperability, privacy, ethics, bias, and fair access, especially in developing economies such as India. This chapter lays the groundwork to appreciate the recent transitional stage of the industry as it advances towards predictive, preventative, participatory and personalized (P4) medicine.