The Transformative Power of AI in Health and Pharma

This technology is helping reduce bureaucracy, improve clinical decisions, and provide more efficient care

Recent years have been especially turbulent for pharma and healthcare, with cost pressures, staff shortages, fragmented technologies, and administrative complexities. Some originated during the COVID-19 pandemic, but most have been dragging on for much longer. In this scenario, AI has the potential to become a critical ally in alleviating many of these pressures.

At the end of 2023, GenAI surprised and inspired the sector with tools designed to help healthcare organizations create artificial intelligence solutions, such as MedLM, a family of foundation models tuned for healthcare industry use cases, and Vertex AI Search for healthcare, designed to help find relevant information and gain insights from it.

During the past year, this technology moved from experimentation to real-world use cases, especially in areas that reduce administrative burdens. For example, they help improve customer experience, reliably automate certain administrative processes, assist doctors in finding information easily, and ultimately help organizations operate more efficiently. However, generative AI applications are not limited to just developing these tasks.

Not surprisingly, it is estimated that approximately 30% of data volume worldwide is being generated by the healthcare industry, and this volume is growing at a rate of 36% annually. This underscores the urgent need for advanced technological solutions, such as artificial intelligence, that can manage, process, and extract value from this enormous amount of information, to transform this data into useful knowledge, improving efficiency, decision-making, and quality of healthcare systems.

Helping pharmacists find "those vitamins that are trending on TikTok"

Let's face it, many of the over-the-counter medications we regularly consume have names that are difficult to remember. Sometimes, these names are long, complicated to pronounce, or simply not on the tip of our tongue when we need them. Our brain, in a vain attempt to fill these memory gaps, resorts to creativity and a good dose of imagination, resulting in distorted names, curious mixtures of syllables, or completely new interpretations of the product we're looking for. This, of course, leads to more than one amusing situation, especially when trying to explain to the pharmacist what we want to buy without having a clear reference.

The result is that, in many cases, these business professionals find themselves in real predicaments trying to decipher what the customer really needs. Add to this the influence of social media, where certain products go viral overnight, and the demand for specific medications and supplements can skyrocket without consumers having clarity about their real name or exact characteristics.

Well, artificial intelligence is transforming the customer experience in pharmacies and facilitating pharmacists' work. Thanks to multimodal search engines, it is now possible to recognize pharmaceutical products from imprecise descriptions, images, or even unclear references. This technology allows customers to find what they need without depending on remembering the exact name of the medication, while pharmacists can provide better service without having to juggle confusing explanations.

Furthermore, these AI-powered search engines can identify emerging trends in pharmaceutical product consumption, quickly recognizing those that have become popular on platforms like TikTok, where medication and supplement recommendations proliferate uncontrollably. Thus, the technology not only improves the shopping experience in pharmacies but also helps reduce errors and improve accuracy in the dispensing of health products.

Market intelligence applied to international pharmaceutical tender management

Tender management has been, for decades, a complex, laborious, and often tedious process for companies that depend on public and private contracts. It involves constant monitoring of multiple information sources, gathering and analyzing specific requirements, and preparing detailed proposals within tight deadlines. The slightest omission or error in the process can result in the loss of strategic opportunities and, consequently, a decrease in market competitiveness.

However, artificial intelligence is completely transforming this dynamic, introducing advanced tools that optimize and streamline each phase of the process. A clear example of this is Market Explorer, a SNGULAR solution that continuously and automatically tracks multiple unstructured sources of any type and origin, such as websites, official bulletins, purchasing portals, etc., in search of new tender opportunities, providing a wealth of contextual information and metrics extracted from the company's own systems. This eliminates the need for constant manual searches and provides information that accelerates opportunity prioritization and response preparation, making it easier for teams responsible for tender management to focus on higher value-added tasks.

In addition to significant time and resource savings, this automation reduces the risk of overlooking key calls, ensuring that pharmaceutical companies can participate in all relevant opportunities and remain competitive in an increasingly dynamic and demanding environment.

Another revolutionary aspect of Market Explorer in tender management is its ability to collect and analyze large volumes of data in real-time. Thanks to its advanced information processing models, it is possible to identify patterns, evaluate market trends, and extract valuable insights that facilitate strategic decision-making. This not only improves efficiency in identifying opportunities but also anticipating changes in demand and adjusting commercial strategies with greater precision.

We see then that the implementation of AI in tender management not only optimizes internal processes but also represents a differentiating element by enhancing organizations' ability to compete in the pharmaceutical sector, ensuring faster, more precise, and efficient access to new business opportunities.

Creating a secure environment for healthcare professionals to interact with conversational assistants

The use of conversational assistants has grown notably in recent years, including their adoption in the healthcare professional environment. However, this expansion carries significant risks if appropriate security and privacy measures are not implemented, especially in such a highly regulated environment as healthcare.

Under these circumstances, SNGULAR has launched Galen, a comprehensive generative artificial intelligence solution designed specifically for the hospital sector, with the aim of reducing care pressure, optimizing operational efficiency, and ensuring patient data security. This multimodal tool responds to the growing workload in hospitals and health centers, where bureaucracy, information overload, and lack of time make healthcare professionals' work difficult. Furthermore, the need to securely manage large and varied volumes of medical information makes advanced solutions like Galen fundamental for the sector's future.

To this end, Galen is based on Google medical models such as MedLM and Gemini Pro, specifically designed for the healthcare field. Both models offer precise answers to clinical questions, draft detailed summaries, and assist in creating medical documentation with accuracy comparable to human experts.

What level of confidence can be expected from these technologies in such a critical environment as healthcare? The answer may be surprising: Both Gemini Pro and MedLM have demonstrated their reliability with a success rate of around 91.1% in the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). Regarding the latest MIR call in our country, the success percentages in the test are very similar, demonstrating this technology's capabilities as a clinical assistance tool.

All this within a reliable and controlled environment, ensuring sensitive data protection and compliance with medical security standards. Data sovereignty is an absolute priority in Galen. Google Cloud's infrastructure ensures the confidentiality of processed information, protecting it against external and internal threats, without sharing it with third parties or using it to train AI models.

Furthermore, its implementation is quick and simple, allowing deployment in Google Cloud in a matter of days, without the need for lengthy configuration processes. The AI models are constantly updated to incorporate the latest medical advances, always ensuring maximum accuracy in their responses.

Galen assists health professionals in multiple tasks, from generating clinical documents to responding to medical queries and training healthcare personnel. Its ability to streamline medical record searches and report preparation helps reduce administrative burden, allowing medical and nursing staff to focus on what's most important, patient care.

Google Cloud, an innovation ecosystem for health and life sciences

Google Cloud has established itself as a strategic partner for health and life sciences organizations seeking to drive data-based innovation, transform patient experience, and improve operational efficiency. The platform offers a wide range of tools and services designed to address the unique challenges of this sector, ranging from clinical data management to drug discovery and precision medicine.

A fundamental aspect of Google Cloud's proposal is its ability to create a longitudinal patient record, allowing healthcare providers to access comprehensive and updated information about each person, throughout all their encounters within the healthcare system. This function is achieved through the Healthcare Data Engine, a tool that facilitates large-scale interoperability and allows organizations to discover the true value of clinical data. Cloud Healthcare APIs are another key component, as they allow developers to create digital services based on standards like FHIR, securely and efficiently.

Artificial intelligence (AI) occupies a central place in Google Cloud's healthcare proposal. Tools like Vertex AI Search for healthcare improve search capabilities within the healthcare and biological field. Using a patented clinical knowledge graph, this solution can analyze large volumes of data and provide natural language answers, facilitating access to critical information for providers, payers, and biotechnology experts.

Additionally, Google Cloud facilitates solutions to optimize prior authorization claims processing through the Claims Acceleration Suite, and to extract valuable information from medical texts. In the pharmaceutical and biotechnology field, its AI-based solutions and high-performance computing accelerate drug discovery and precision medicine. The platform enables more efficient in silico drug design, transforms genomic data through the Multiomics Suite, and accelerates AI development using Google Cloud TPUs.

Google Cloud's focus on interoperability and the use of open standards is another key factor for its platform's success in the healthcare sector. Furthermore, the company maintains a firm commitment to security, compliance, and sovereignty, protecting sensitive data such as protected health information (PHI) and research data. The platform offers advanced tools for identity management, network security, and threat detection and response.

Google Cloud distinguishes itself through its ability to drive operational efficiency and create patient-centered growth models through data-based solutions. The company collaborates with leading organizations in the health and life sciences sector, helping them overcome complex challenges and accelerate their digital transformation.

Solutions that respond to medicine and healthcare challenges

The future of health demands more than innovative solutions; it requires a disruptive approach. At SNGULAR, we harness the power of artificial intelligence to achieve better health outcomes, and help healthcare professionals deliver more personalized care with a more humanizing vision of medicine.

Our AI experience spans a wide range of applications, from administrative task optimization to improving clinical decision-making. We help in implementing predictive models, machine learning, tender analysis and management, as well as exploiting the potential of generative AI to transform medical care.

We work alongside your professionals to develop innovative patient-centered solutions, prepared for the future and adapted to a constantly changing environment. At SNGULAR, we are not just your technology provider, but a trusted partner committed to helping you meet and exceed your constantly evolving expectations.

If you are interested in improving your organization's operation, we can help you develop unique solutions to meet your business's specific needs. We work hand in hand with you, strategically using technology to optimize your processes and take your company to the next level.