Eversana and Amazon plan generative AI push in pharma

There's a lot of talk about the role that generative artificial intelligence (AI) will have to play in the pharma industry, and a new alliance between Eversana and Amazon aims to speed up its adoption.

Eversana – which provides commercialisation services to pharma and life sciences clients – will work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to "pharmatise" the use of generative AI in the sector.

There is already widespread belief that generative AI – which uses algorithms like ChatGPT to create new content – will soon revolutionise how organisations operate, with a recent poll finding that 86% of IT leaders believe it will be used to drive efficiency and innovation in the near future.

A highly technical industry like pharma will need tailored technologies, however, and Eversana and AWS plan to deliver tools that will "reimagine everything, from customer experiences and omnichannel engagement to software development and operating models," according to Eversana's chief executive, Jim Lang.

"Companies that find the optimal balance of human and AI-powered services will leap ahead in every industry, and pharma is no different," he added.

The first round of development will focus on three key areas, including tools for medical and regulatory review processes, which at the moment can be time-consuming manual operations, said the partners.

They also have field and patient assistance in their sights – for example, the use of chatbots to automate mundane tasks and improve engagement with patients – as well as disease and product education content generation, to help companies interact more effectively with both patients and healthcare professionals.

In the partnership, Eversana will contribute digital and AI expertise that will be coupled with Amazon Bedrock, AWS' service for building and scaling generative AI applications. The Bedrock platform was launched earlier this year with in-house foundation models (FMs) – a type of AI that is trained on large amounts of data that can be adapted to a wide range of tasks and operations – along with a marketplace of pre-trained models from third-party companies.

Google and Microsoft have taken similar marketplace approaches to AI models with their respective Google Cloud and Azure platforms. The tech giants allow partner companies to train chatbots and other AI tools on the platforms, so they don't have to invest in their own data centres.

Eversana and AWS said their alliance will "help pharmaceutical and life sciences manufacturers drive efficiencies and business value, while improving patient outcomes."