While the history of Artificial Intelligence (AI) field began in the distant 1950s, its practical value had largely remained limited all the way until the emergence of powerful hardware (GPUs) in the late 1990s. Other complementary technologies played an important role in the AI progress too: new data storage capabilities, cheap cloud infrastructures, advanced deep learning algorithms -- all these things became reality only in the 21st century, effectively setting AI field for exponential development trajectory and commercial practical utility. 

Today AI tech has matured to an extent it has become a strategic factor, a competitive differentiator, not only for individual companies but for the whole industries and countries. Needless to say, healthcare -- one of the major industries -- is an important end-user of AI technologies. Countries that care to adopt AI in their healthcare strategies today will have major competitive benefits for public health and safety tomorrow.

There is a great deal of hype and a lot of misconceptions among life science experts as to how AI can or can’t be applied in pharmaceutical research and business. Judging by the rapidly increasing number of AI-involved deals and partnerships tapped by big pharma recently, it becomes obvious that life sciences decision-makers are eager to understand what this new and disruptive technology can bring to the table, and how it can be adopted efficiently with tangible ROI.

In order to get valuable first-hand insight and new ideas about the technology and its emerging role in the life sciences industry, I have asked several questions to Dr. Loubna Bouarfa, Founder and CEO at ​OKRA Technologies ― a leading AI company for healthcare, which builds a sophisticated AI-driven engine specialized in supporting faster and more accurate decisions for life science executives and field teams. Loubna is also a member of the European Union AI High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) and the winner of several prestigious awards, such as MIT Innovator Under 35 and Forbes Top 50 European Women in Technology. Last year, OKRA was named the Best Female-Led Startup at the StartUp Europe Awards.

As we enter a new decade, our belief in the the impact of Artificial intelligence (AI) is only getting stronger. Supporting the industry to drive the right drug to the right patient at speed is a huge responsibility that we take very seriously. Towards the end of the last decade we have seen great progress made within life sciences and the use of AI, but moving into 2020 the spotlight on commercial teams and gaining competitive advantage with AI will intensify.

In this interview, Rasim Shah, Director at OKRA Technologies provided a glimpse into how the company applies state of the art machine learning technologies to solve real world challanges in the life sciences. Rasim also agreed to answer several questions about a more general context of AI in pharma, its current challanges and future perspective, as well as describe the current efforts the European Union puts into supporting the AI ecosystem in the region.

 

Rasim Shah, Director at OKRA Technologies:

OKRA Technologies is a leading European artificial intelligence (AI) company for life sciences. Our goal is to empower life science executives at their desks or whilst on the move, with explainable AI outputs. OKRA’s solutions deliver suggestions, predictions and explanations to enable life sciences executives and operational teams to drive the right drug to the right patient with humanised and understandable AI outputs. The OKRA engine learns from real-world data, structured, unstructured, clinical, commercial and scientific literature to drive the right insight to the different teams in life sciences. Our deep expertise in AI, combined with in-depth medical and product knowledge from life science leaders, has allowed us to develop and co-create products that can transform the way life sciences approach traditional industry challenges. We focus on operationalising AI in an ethical way by placing users of these systems at the centre.