Dozens of life sciences leaders converged in Durham for the AI Execution Summit earlier this month. The single-day event brought together senior executives and investors from across the industry ecosystem to discuss current trends, practical approaches, and best practices for creating value with AI. In case you couldn’t join us, here are some of the key themes and highlights from the event.
Managing Your Response to Disruptive Innovation
By any measure, AI is an example of a “disruptive innovation.” Historically, how businesses have responded to these types of emerging technologies has had a dramatic impact on their long-term market viability and valuations. Summit participants were encouraged to evaluate their current AI posture along a continuum ranging from “left behind” to “setting the pace” for the industry. Much of the conference focused on helping leaders explore options for advancing their maturity in this rapidly evolving space.
The summit highlighted numerous organizations that are already experiencing strong success with AI. Dr. Ricky Bloomfield, Chief Medical Officer at Oura Ring, discussed his organization’s remarkable success in cultivating an AI-native company capable of empowering patients with data. Multiple case studies highlighted the life-saving benefits of real-time insights that are only possible through the creative use of AI.
Taking the conversation further, an expert panel that included Jeff Elton (Vice Chair & Former Founding CEO, ConcertAI), Suresh De Silva (Chief Scientific Officer, Shattuck Labs), and LaRae Bennett (Senior Director of Digital Strategy, BioIVT) discussed their experiences in advancing AI maturity within their enterprises. Across their respective journeys in drug discovery, operations, and clinical research in areas like oncology, the experts shared a common view that value creation is both attainable and already underway. Advanced use cases such as agent-to-agent solutions are emerging, and the experts emphasized building strong foundations in areas like data competencies and iterative learning. They also encouraged leaders to overcome the natural hesitancies that might otherwise inhibit companies from uncovering new opportunities for innovation.
Whether product, services, or technology-oriented, all successful life sciences organizations will be AI-driven.
As highlighted by the speakers, disruptive technologies like AI redefine market viability for companies. The pervasive impact of AI in life sciences – simultaneously spanning discovery, development, manufacturing, regulatory, commercialization, and even care delivery with patients – is pointing to a future where both the science and operations within all industry organizations will be AI-driven. Given AI’s broad-reaching impact, every organization needs an AI strategy that directs focus and investments on value creation and sustainable market differentiation. To move forward with this idea, summit leaders participated in workshops designed to explore some of the planning considerations for incorporating AI into their corporate strategies.
AI is sufficiently mature for life sciences use cases.
One of five myths debunked during the conference was that the complex, regulated nature of industry processes are beyond AI’s capabilities. CREO demonstrated a custom AI voice agent that was fully capable of interacting with clinical protocol documents, clinical trial management systems, and EDC data repositories to address a wide variety of research needs with 100% accuracy. Offering protected access to enterprise data repositories, the agent was also able to dynamically solve puzzles presented in the retrieved data, demonstrating AI’s extensibility far beyond traditional clinical systems and biostatistics.
Most organizations are not fully ready for AI.
Though today’s AI technologies are undeniably impressive, leaders need to be mindful about – and plan for – improvements in people, processes, technology, data, and culture that are needed to support AI at scale. AI requires a stronger information infrastructure, and it requires teams that can develop reusable internal products (not just projects). Mounting evidence from AI adopters shows that value creation is only obtained through process re-engineering, not simply by adding AI to existing processes. Workshops during the conference focused on AI strategies and capability assessments that help leaders evaluate AI-related organizational development priorities.
Taking the Next Steps
The conference concluded with attendees sharing their experiences and feedback on the day. The executives expressed appreciation both for the content and the opportunity to gather with peers as a community to explore how AI is shaping the industry.
Leaders have a variety of next steps they can take in advancing their maturity with AI. CREO is working side-by-side with clients in areas such as:
AI Innovation Labs and Workshops that provide executives and their teams opportunities to learn about AI, explore innovation opportunities, and develop business cases with estimated returns.
AI Strategy Engines that provide organizational assessments, strategic planning, and roadmap execution support for driving value-creation priorities with AI and data sciences
AI Transformation Partner services that offer fractional AI leadership and advanced solution development and support teams that help turn innovative ideas into value-generating improvements.
If you’d like to learn more, check out our video recap of the conference, and contact us for more information on how to accelerate your journey with AI.
Learn more about how CREO is helping clients build a smarter AI strategy.
Jason Burke is the Chief Strategy and AI Officer, where he leads the firm’s corporate and industry strategy as well as engagements related to AI, analytics, data sciences, and emerging technologies.
