How Can AI Transform The Pharmaceutical Industry

Raj Indupuri, CEO, eClinical Solutions

Pharmaceutical Executive: How do you see AI transforming the pharmaceutical industry?

Raj Indupuri: So in terms of advancements the last few years with AI, the promise of AI, I would say the last 12 to 18 months have been more compelling in terms of how the latest advancements will impact drug development, and one of the biggest challenges we have with development is both the increased complexity with protocols and study design and also the amount of data that we continue to collect.

Just recently, there was research from Tufts, so in 2012 if I remember correctly, for a phase III average phase III the amount of data we were collecting were around 900,000 data points. And in 2025 we are now collecting, for an average phase III around 6 million data points. As you can see, the amount of data that we are collecting is exploding. That’s one, and also the cycle times have been increasing because, again, the designs are getting complex, right?

Patient recruitment is a challenge right now the promise of science, is much bigger and ambitious and bolder and that leads to complexity, not only with the design, but also how you conduct so by default or by design, I think there are lot of inefficiencies built in into the entire clinical development value chain.

Whole promise of AI and what it’s already demonstrating is automating and eliminating these manual inefficiencies and also helping one area that we actually work very closely is all around data. So helping getting insights of this data that’s been collected for decision making, right? And then you can iterate and react quickly and also pivot in terms of trials, manage your risk more efficiently. So there is tremendous progress. And what we are seeing now is by embedding AI into the clinical output value chain.

We as eClinical, as a company, and also myself, we strongly believe the cycle times can be reduced, and also the risk can be reduced, and overall, not the cost right that’s also has been increasing, study can drastically reduce. And then again, what we are all working towards as an industry is to help patients and and I believe this tech is truly transformative to help patients, and hopefully make it better in terms of the quality of life.

Raj Indupuri

CEO, eClinical Solutions

A technologist with over 25 years of industry experience, Raj Indupuri is responsible for establishing the eClinical Solutions vision and future-looking technology strategy. He is deeply passionate about fostering innovation to revolutionize the Life Sciences industry with ground-breaking technologies that will modernize clinical trials and bring treatments to patients faster. As an industry veteran who has been part of the evolution of Life Sciences and clinical data management for over two decades, Raj has an astute business vision to realize the digital future and enable progress and potential with data and analytics at the core of the company’s innovative products and solutions. Raj is responsible for the overall direction and management of the company and is a Mechanical Engineer with an MBA from Boston University who firmly believes data is the new fuel that will drive human progress.