“When AI comes into play, this industry moves even faster.”
– David Resendes, VP of Marketing
AI is transforming industries across the board, but in Pharma it’s reshaping the entire landscape — and it’s not without challenges.
As AI accelerates the delivery of life-saving treatments, Pharma professionals must keep up with expanding portfolios, evolving regulations, new processes and emerging AI tools.
In this part of our AI in Pharma series, we explore the challenges associated specifically with AI and how this advancement in technology is creating a bigger skills gap in the Pharma workforce.
Exacerbating Pharma training challenges
AI makes existing training challenges even more pressing, as the technology promises to enable Pharma companies to more quickly develop and sell innovative new drugs, the learning curve grows even greater for employees. Even still, with an overall investment of more than $60 billion in AI, it’s clear that the industry is adopting AI for R&D purposes wholeheartedly.
With these investments, the Pharma industry is rapidly embedding AI across the drug lifecycle, moving well beyond pilot projects into core strategic use in drug discovery, clinical development, regulatory work and operations.
Transforming drug discovery
AI’s ability to analyze vast datasets and predict biological interactions is helping companies accelerate drug discovery, optimize clinical trials and reduce R&D costs.
As a result, AI has rapidly transitioned into a transformational force reshaping training and learning programs as well as Pharmaceutical research, development timelines and operational efficiency, with widespread adoption expected to continue growing.
Accelerating decision-making
“AI is now being used for drug development, getting drugs out faster for market analysis, and for personalized medicine. So that makes it really important for Pharma employees to know more information. It adds more complexity… and creates a domino effect.”
— David Resendes, VP of Marketing
AI allows for rapid data analysis, enabling informed decisions, reduced costs and faster discovery of new treatments. Pharma companies used to take more than a decade to bring a new treatment to market, but with AI, new drugs can make it to patients much quicker.
Changing roles and skill gaps
From drug discovery and clinical trial design to Pharmacovigilance and commercial analytics, AI tools are being adopted faster than teams can be trained to use them.
Roles are evolving just as quickly. Scientists, medical affairs teams and commercial roles are expected to interpret AI-driven insights, not just simply follow established processes. Misuse can impact patient safety, trial outcomes or regulatory standing, raising the stakes for timely, accurate employee training.
In response, companies need to invest in AI literacy and workforce training to build fluency and ensure responsible use of AI-enabled tools. This helps to build a shared understanding, accelerating decision-making and reducing risk so AI-driven innovation translates into safe and effective therapies.
Understanding data stewardship and AI ethics
Pharma employees need to be brought up to speed on data quality issues. AI outcomes are only as strong as the data behind them. Employees need training on data stewardship, recognizing bias and understanding how poor data inputs can affect AI outputs, especially in high-stakes environments like clinical development and patient safety.
In addition, Pharma organizations face heightened scrutiny around ethical AI use, including bias, patient privacy and decision accountability. Training is required to help employees recognize ethical risks, apply internal guidelines and know when human judgment must override AI recommendations.
Pharma teams are expected to absorb complex information, communicate it clearly and learn to use AI tools. All at a faster pace and with greater expectations.
So how can teams keep up? It’s definitely not from traditional, one-off training. In the final part of our AI in Pharma series, we explore how AI is also helping train teams faster — keeping Pharma professionals compliant, confident and informed.
