The Health Pulse: A Pharma CIO’s Prescription for Building a Data-Driven Culture

On this episode, Greg is joined by Herman De Prins, Global CIO of UCB. UCB is a mid-sized global biopharma company focusing on immunology and neurology. Herman describes UCB’s journey into artificial intelligence (AI) projects aimed at treatments for epilepsy. Herman also shares how UCB promoted data literacy and AI among its staff of more than 8,000 people. The programs UCB has put in place have been very effective in driving enthusiasm for data-driven decision making throughout the company. In fact, Herman shares that their challenge isn’t around internal resistance to AI, it’s prioritizing the many potential projects brought forth by the team. UCB also has a process for evaluating projects based on the strength of the business cases behind them. Herman emphasized that there is value in AI across the pharmaceutical value chain, particularly in R&D and commercial. For example, last year UCB teamed up with Microsoft on the Moonshot Initiative where they used AI to conduct research on potential treatments for COVID-19 and reduced the time typically required for that research from six months to three days. Greg and Herman conclude their chat by discussing the future of AI and Herman’s thoughts on the potential opportunities and pitfalls in a world where AI will increasingly be embedded in technology products all around us. All presentations represent the opinions of the presenter and do not represent the position or the opinion of SAS.