Eversana and AWS Partner on AI Project: Q&A With Scott Snyder, Chief Digital Officer at Eversana

Scott Snyder
Chief digital officer
Eversana

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is teaming up with Eversana to design a generative AI for the pharmaceutical and life scienes industry. Medical Device & Technology spoke with Scott Snyder, Eversana’s chief digital officer, about this partnership.

(MDT:) What ethical frameworks are being applied to AI in the Pharma industry?

Scott Snyder: There are a number of notable AI Ethics frameworks published by organizations like UNESCO, Rolls Royce (Aletheia), and tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AI (Service Cards). Several pharma companies have published their own frameworks for ethical AI development (AZ, Pfizer, Novartis, others) and WHO (Ethics and Governance of AI in healthcare). Similar to AWS, we have adopted a framework that is guided by Fairness, Explainability, Privacy and Security, Robustness, Governance, and Transparency. We recognize this is an area that needs continued attention to stay ahead of emerging AI capabilities and risks.

(MDT:) How will AI be used to improve medical and regulatory review processes?

Snyder: The regulatory review process is traditionally a time-consuming and manual activity. Automation with both traditional and Generative AI (Gen AI) will improve the accuracy and quality of materials submitted for Medical-Regulatory review and accelerate content review/approval. This will aid in automating the initial identification of claims, creating source references, automatically identifying and creating highlighted references in new materials for easy review, and decreasing manual fact checking to reduce overall manual effort by up to 90%.

(MDT:) What forms of AI will be used to improve field and patient assistance programs?

Snyder: Traditional machine learning/predictive analytics can be used to target audiences for field and patient services outreach, delivering next-best action for omnichannel campaigns. Generative AI can be used to assist field reps and patient support agents in responding to customer inquiries based on historical data/content, improving productivity through easier access to data/insights, personalizing training programs, and offering intuitive, conversational self-service tools.

(MDT:) What role does AWS play?

Snyder: AWS provides a full suite of market-leading platforms and services to develop Gen AI applications using best-of-breed foundational models from both AWS and their ecosystem partners such as A121 Labs, Anthropic, and Stability AI via their API service platform, Bedrock. All of this is built on AWS’s best-in-class, high-performance cloud infrastructure to meet the rigorous security and scalability needs of pharma companies. To have a group like AWS that we can team up with that brings unmatched experience and innovation really is exciting for both our team and our clients. The sky is the limit in what we can accomplish together that can ultimately make a huge difference in the lives of patients.

(MDT:) How will AI be used to improve disease and product education?

Snyder: Gen AI is allowing us to increase the velocity and personalization of content, including disease education for both patients and the HCPs treating them. EVERSANA already has a strong presence in this area. Over the past few years, we’ve created several award-winning AI-generated videos for educating HCPs in the neurology space. Our custom AI solutions built on top of AWS Bedrock will allow us to create on-demand educational materials from pre-existing, validated content.

Getting disease education right is critical to our mission to create a healthier world for all. AI will never replicate the tried-and-true knowledge of clinical experts who have studied for decades on how to fight different conditions. But what the technology can and will do is be a complement to what and how we develop these materials to speed up the development process to help us hopefully reach patients and their families faster. I’m excited about the endless opportunities it holds for everyone because, in the end, we all will benefit.