the health strategist
research institute for health strategy
and digital health
Joaquim Cardoso MSc.
Chief Research and Strategy Officer (CRSO),
Chief Editor and Senior Advisor
August 18, 2023
What is the message?
The “Pharma AI Readiness Index: Who’s Best-Positioned for the AI Boom?” underscores the pharmaceutical industry’s increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and provides an insightful evaluation of the top 50 pharmaceutical companies’ readiness to embrace this technological transformation.
Highlighting the significance of AI talent, execution capabilities, and innovation strategies, the article emphasizes the imperative for pharmaceutical giants to strategically position themselves in the evolving landscape, harnessing AI’s potential to drive innovation, enhance drug development processes, and shape the industry’s future trajectory.
Key takeaways:
- Pharma Industry’s AI Adoption: The pharmaceutical industry is increasingly embracing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, with companies like Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and Sanofi making substantial investments and commitments to integrating AI into various aspects of their operations.
- CB Insights’ Evaluation: The Pharma AI Readiness Index, developed by CB Insights, evaluates the top 50 pharmaceutical companies in the Americas and Europe based on their ability to attract AI talent, execute AI projects, and innovate through research and investments.
- Top Performers – Roche and Bayer: Roche and Bayer are highlighted as the leading pharmaceutical companies in terms of AI readiness. Their strong performance is attributed to their significant AI innovation efforts, including acquisitions, investments, and patent applications.
- Talent Readiness: The assessment of AI talent readiness focuses on companies’ abilities to attract and retain AI specialists. Leading companies have demonstrated efforts to establish AI disciplines and hire individuals with extensive academic or industry experience in AI-related fields.
- Execution Capability: Execution readiness measures a company’s capacity to bring AI-powered products and services to market and implement AI solutions internally. Many of the top 50 pharmaceutical companies have formed partnerships or licensing agreements with AI-focused entities, showcasing their dedication to integrating AI into various operations.
- Innovation Landscape: The innovation category reflects companies’ records in developing or acquiring novel AI capabilities. Notably, few companies have made AI-related acquisitions, and only a handful account for the majority of AI investments since 2018. Bayer emerges as a prominent investor in AI startups.
- Varied Innovation Scores: Among the three categories, innovation readiness shows the most variability. While some companies are actively pursuing AI-related acquisitions, investments, and patents, others lag behind in this aspect, indicating diverse strategies in preparing for the AI boom.
- Strategic Insights: The Pharma AI Readiness Index serves as a comprehensive benchmark for assessing the industry’s preparedness for the AI revolution. It underscores the pivotal role of AI talent, execution capability, and innovation strategy in determining companies’ competitive positions in the evolving pharmaceutical landscape.
- Industry Transformation: The index sheds light on the transformative potential of AI within the pharmaceutical industry. As companies invest in AI expertise, establish partnerships, and make strategic acquisitions, they position themselves to harness AI’s power to revolutionize drug discovery, development, and healthcare services.
- Future Implications: The assessment presented by the Pharma AI Readiness Index serves as a call to action for pharmaceutical companies to further invest in AI capabilities and talent. The companies that effectively leverage AI technologies are likely to gain a competitive advantage, drive innovation, and shape the industry’s future trajectory.
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DEEP DIVE
Pharma AI Readiness Index: Who’s best-positioned for the AI boom?
CBN Insights
August 8, 2023
The Pharma AI Readiness Index assesses how prepared top pharmaceutical companies are to adopt and respond to rapidly evolving AI technologies.
Pharmaceutical companies are embracing AI in droves.
In May, Eli Lilly signed a $250M collaboration with XtalPi, the top-funded startup in AI drug discovery & design. Mentions of AI surged in AstraZeneca’s Q1’23 earnings call. And Sanofi announced its ambition to be “the first pharma company powered by artificial intelligence at scale” in a press release in June.
But which ones are best equipped to take advantage of the technology?
CB Insights has launched the Pharma AI Readiness Index — a ranking of the 50 largest pharmaceutical companies in the Americas and Europe by market cap, based on their demonstrated ability to attract top AI talent, execute AI projects, and innovate through R&D and investments.
The index is calculated based on CB Insights datasets including patent applications, partnership & licensing agreements, dealmaking activity, acquisitions, key people, product launches, and earnings transcripts.
To dive deeper into this data, sign up for a CB Insights free trial here.
Roche and Bayer are the 2 top-scoring pharma companies, primarily due to their leading levels of AI innovation via acquisitions, investments, and patents. Like Roche and Bayer, other high-scoring companies have made clear investments in AI talent and — to a lesser degree — have a demonstrated ability to execute AI initiatives.
Below, we look at how prepared the top 50 pharmaceutical companies are to adapt to a rapidly evolving AI landscape across 3 key pillars: talent, execution, and innovation.
- Talent: The talent score measures a pharmaceutical company’s ability to attract and retain AI specialists. This score is based on CB Insights data including employee headcount and key AI hires.
- Execution: The execution score measures a pharmaceutical company’s ability to bring AI-powered products and services to market, as well as deploy AI internally across corporate functions. This score is based on CB Insights data including business relationships, product launch media mentions, and earnings transcripts.
- Innovation: The innovation score measures a pharmaceutical company’s track record of developing or acquiring novel AI capabilities. This score is based on CB Insights data including patents, acquisitions, and dealmaking activity.
Talent
The top-ranking pharma companies in our analysis have established AI disciplines with clear leadership mandates — led by individuals with extensive academic or industry experience — and targeted hiring in technical roles. For instance:
- Moderna’s chief data and AI officer, Dave Johnson, holds a PhD in information physics. Johnson has publicly discussed his team’s use of AI to help develop Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine. More broadly, Moderna has hired AI talent from leading institutions like Carnegie Mellon University and Harvard University.
- AstraZeneca’s VP of data science and AI, R&D, James Weatherall, joined the company in 2007 and also serves as the vice chair of the data science section on the council of the Royal Statistical Society. AstraZeneca has also hired AI talent from leading institutions like Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge.
Execution
Half of the 50 largest pharma companies have entered into partnership or licensing agreements with AI companies.
To highlight a few business relationships:
- Merck Group was the launch partner for Insilico Medicine’s generative chemistry AI platform in November 2020.
- Novartis and Microsoft have a long-standing AI partnership, which includes a joint research lab and co-development of an open-source model for leprosy detection through the Novartis Foundation.
- Sanofi extended an oncology collaboration with Aqemia in June 2022 focused on AI- and quantum physics-enabled drug discovery.
More so, 23 out of the 50 companies have mentioned AI on earnings calls at least once over the past 5 years. GSK has mentioned AI across 8 earnings calls during that time — more than any of the other companies.
Innovation
Innovation scores are the most disparate of the 3 categories in our analysis.
Only 3 of the 50 largest pharma companies have made an AI acquisition. And just 5 account for over half of all AI investments made since 2018.
- Bayer is the top investor in AI startups among these 50 pharma companies. Its corporate venture capital arm, Leaps by Bayer, has backed 12 deals since 2018. Three of these deals went to Huma, a leader in decentralized clinical trials.
- Only 3 of the 50 companies — Bayer, BioNTech, and Roche — have made an AI acquisition. Two of these acquisitions occurred in January 2023: Bayer acquired Blackford Analysis, an AI medical imaging platform; and BioNTech acquired InstaDeep, which specializes in protein design.
Originally published at https://www.cbinsights.com
