The Leap Forward: Practical Gains for Pharma AI Use

Bianca Anghelina, CEO and founder, Aily Labs

Helen Merianos, Global Head of R&D Strategy & Portfolio Management, Sanofi

Ruth Beadle, Head of Global Supply Chain, Sanofi

Today’s pharmaceutical landscape demands faster, smarter decision-making at scale. With managers making nearly three billion critical decisions annually, poor judgment and ineffective decision-making can cost the average S&P 500 company a staggering $250 million each year. Enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) offers an unprecedented opportunity to reverse this trend—delivering savings and efficiency gains that are impossible through traditional methods. In the pharmaceutical industry alone, generative AI is projected to unlock $110 billion annually.¹

At Sanofi, for example, AI initiatives have already delivered $300 million in savings by predicting and mitigating 80% of low inventory risks, underscoring its transformative power. Seamlessly integrating AI transversally across all industry domains—from R&D to clinical development, operations, commercial, regulatory, and supply chain—unleashes unprecedented capabilities that lead to improved patient outcomes and more sustainable business models.

To unlock AI’s full potential, C-suite pharma executives must champion large-scale AI adoption at scale and build a clear roadmap for democratizing this technology enterprise-wide.

UNLOCKING AI’S POTENTIAL WITH A STRATEGIC ROADMAP

AI is already proving its value in transforming drug discovery, with use cases demonstrating its ability to speed up research processes from weeks to hours and streamline clinical trial operations to accelerate time-to-market. It holds incredible promise to drive new innovations, which begs the question, why is it that 85% of AI/machine learning projects fail to produce a return for businesses.² While most leaders agree AI is now a workplace necessity, 60% worry their organization’s leadership lacks a plan and vision to implement the technology.³ Successful AI deployment requires a clear, strategic roadmap and company-wide cultural shift for teams to make more informed, data-driven decisions with a holistic view of the enterprise, rather than siloed decision-making that can be subjectively influenced.

With the right strategy in place, AI seamlessly integrates into the employee experience. In the same way that an employee typically starts their day by checking emails, AI can become part of the daily morning routine to provide real-time insights in a single click.

AI AS A DAILY COMPANION AND ADVISOR

At Sanofi, for example, more than 15,000 employees use an AI-powered app called plai daily. The plai app, co-developed with Aily Labs, aggregates more than one billion data points across the company to predict value drivers such as R&D costs, clinical trial enrollment timelines, and a program’s probability of success. Powered by over 300 AI models with up to 99% predictive accuracy, plai transforms vast amounts of complex data into real-time, actionable insights, enabling Sanofi’s leaders to make precise, cross-functional decisions swiftly and accurately. This AI-driven approach can enhance work efficiency, optimize resources, and drives growth across the value chain. It’s decision intelligence is designed to integrate across business functions—with the goal of breaking down silos and providing a comprehensive 360-degree operational view. Sanofi has been able to deploy this AI technology at scale by transforming the company culture and empowering employees at all levels to use AI in their daily work.

By taking a “snackable AI” approach, complex data is broken down into “bite-size,” actionable insights delivered in familiar formats, such as video reels and stories, to help everyone in the organization make smarter decisions across the value chain. Leadership teams regularly organize AI hackathons and boot camps to help employees understand how AI can change the way they work and leverage the right inputs for improved decision-making—making the technology less daunting for the everyday user.

In the long run, equipping employees at all levels with the right AI tools can collectively save thousands of hours of manual labor across the organization, as real-time insights generated by AI every day are equivalent to 60,000 people analyzing 14 million spreadsheets over an entire year.

SUPERCHARGING PRODUCTIVITY AND ELIMINATING BIAS

Pharma companies that adopt AI across their organizations have the potential to double their operating profits and gain an additional $254 billion in operating profits worldwide by 2030.⁴ Among more than 200 use cases analyzed by PwC, AI in operations account for 39% of this impact by boosting efficiency on production, material, and supply chain costs. Tapping this opportunity, Sanofi has AI screen real-time data in the background, with employees receiving push notifications that can alert them when something appears out of the ordinary, providing insights to trigger faster, smarter decision-making for course correction. Data analysis that may have previously taken hours to pull manually can now be accessed by employees in real time at their fingertips.

The plai app, for example, has streamlined decisions for Sanofi by removing emotional biases, doubling the speed of decision-making, and proactively analyzed thousands of files for strategic divestments, among other use cases. The app can be used in many ways to simplify work across the value chain:

• A chief financial officer might see an AI reel identifying underperforming products and suggesting a spend reallocation to uplift the top line by $100 million.
• A manufacturing manager might receive an AI reel detecting high manufacturing deviations in a certain plant and recommending corrective actions to increase service level by 2%.
• An R&D executive might see an AI reel suggesting enrolling a certain number of sites in a clinical trial to accelerate the trial endpoint and reach patients one year faster.

AI AGENTS: PHARMA’S NEXT ADVANCEMENT

In an industry where every decision can impact millions of lives and billions in revenue, AI agents represent a game-changing breakthrough in enterprise decision-making. These hyper-personalized advisors transcend traditional AI capabilities by autonomously managing complex, multi-step processes. Whether optimizing clinical trial site selection, mitigating supply chain risks, or reallocating R&D resources, AI agents can deliver more than reactive responses—they can proactively offer hyper-personalized recommendations and trade-offs to enhance both patient outcomes and business performance.

For pharmaceutical leaders, AI agents are set to revolutionize daily operations. They will streamline R&D, bolster regulatory compliance, and ensure timely delivery of life-saving treatments. By driving innovation and minimizing operational risks, AI agents can potentially redefine the future of pharmaceutical innovation agility and accuracy.

AI IN PHARMA: SHAPING TOMORROW

Business use cases for AI are becoming more complex, and the pace of integration continues to move at lightning speed. This makes it imperative for companies to deploy AI solutions that are scalable and make data easily understandable to establish trust with employees and eliminate decision bias. AI is already disrupting existing business processes, accelerating productivity ten-fold across domains, reducing risk, and achieving significant savings, as seen with an increase in collaborations between drugmakers and technology specialist companies. Strategic partnerships that harness the potential of AI to generate proactive, hyper-personalized decision recommendations based on the unique user, job function, and business goals will enable the evolution from AI-powered decision support to full-decision automation.

The ultimate goal of this technology is not to replace human workers but to act as an advisor, automating certain tasks to significantly boost productivity and efficiency. This advisory role is essential to creating more sustainable business models and better decision-making as the volume of data involved becomes too vast for any human alone to process effectively.

In the end, the integration of AI is not just an opportunity but a necessity. The transformative financial impact and future-proofing capabilities of AI are clear. Now is the time for pharma leaders to act decisively. Embrace AI, champion its adoption across your organization, and build a culture that leverages its full potential. By doing so, you will not only drive innovation and efficiency but also position your company at the forefront of the industry, ready to meet the challenges of tomorrow with confidence and agility.

Bianca Anghelina is CEO and founder, Aily Labs; Helen Merianos is Global Head of R&D Strategy & Portfolio Management, Sanofi; and Ruth Beadle is Head of Global Supply Chain, Sanofi

References

1. Generative AI in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Moving from Hype to Reality. McKinsey & Company. January 9, 2024. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/life-sciences/our-insights/generative-ai-in-the-pharmaceutical-industry-moving-from-hype-to-reality

2. Gartner Says Nearly Half of CIOs are Planning to Deploy Artificial Intelligence. Gartner. February 13, 2018. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-02-13-gartner-says-nearly-half-of-cios-are-planning-to-deploy-artificial-intelligence

3. AI at Work is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part. Microsoft. May 8, 2024. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/ai-at-work-is-here-now-comes-the-hard-part

4. Reinventing Pharma with Artificial Intelligence. PwC. 2024. https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/de/en/industries/pharma-life-science/re-inventing-pharma-with-artificial-intelligence.html#:~:text=Overall%2C%20