Andrea Pezzetta, Chief Data Officer at Ipsen, speaks with Huma.Ai CEO and Co-founder Lana Feng, in a video interview about her professional journey, the impact of generative AI (GenAI) on the pharmaceutical value chain, and the need for upskilling to address AI skill gaps.
Ipsen is a French biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Paris. Pezzetta has been in the data space for over 25 years. She started her career in healthcare and has worked across various domains within the industry.
Speaking about the impact of GenAI on the development of saving drugs Pezzetta says that it will accelerate the journey of bringing the right medicines to the right patients at a pace never seen before. It also brings the industry closer to precision medicine, having treatments that will work best for a particular patient for a specific disease.
Elaborating further, Pezzetta says that the impact will be on the entire spectrum of the drug development process. Sharing an example, she mentions how AI is enabling drug companies to sort through massive amounts of structured and unstructured data to suggest new potential drug candidates in months instead of years.
For a second example, she adds that GenAI will streamline trials through faster protocol design development and will enable the leveraging of real-world data to test safety efficacy reducing the time and cost of clinical trials. Similarly, in terms of manufacturing, GenAI can predict batch process quality which can reduce the time and the cost of bringing new drugs to market.
When asked about the impact of AI on jobs and upskilling to meet AI needs, Pezzetta says that the scenario opens up opportunities for employees to dive in and learn. Since data is the main ingredient for AI, she stresses the need for people who understand data along with technology. She also mentions the need for enabling a data governance model around all of this to ensure compliance and appropriate outputs.
For employers, Pezzetta says that there is a need to ensure teams have autonomy and opportunities to learn, grow, and have the knowledge to be successful in the space of GenAI.
Sharing further on the topic, Pezzetta highlights the need to look at innovation happening within and outside one's industry. She further urges practitioners to look into the startup space and seek opportunities to partner and participate in things that can broaden knowledge and help understand how best to bring proper drugs as quickly as possible to patients.
CDO Magazine appreciates Andrea Pezzetta for sharing her insights with our global community.