Japanese companies Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma and Hitachi have partnered to improve the efficiency of clinical trials for the development of new drugs.

Under the partnership, the companies will undertake a range of operations to enhance trials using Hitachi’s Artificial Intelligence (AI), an advanced digital technology, so as to reduce the period for development of new drugs, as well as development cost.

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Hitachi’s Research & Development Group has developed the AI technology for medical use.

Drug prices in the country are currently under pressure and cheap generic drugs are capturing an increasing share of the market.

“By using AI technology such as natural language processing and deep learning, the companies have confirmed that the time spent to gather information is reduced by about 70%.”

In order to meet this challenge, the companies are searching for a better way to design the trials, which requires a huge amount of time and the know-how, as well as the experience of skilled experts.

To address them, Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma and Hitachi jointly started considering automated information search and collection at the beginning of last year.

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By using AI technology such as natural language processing and deep learning, the companies have confirmed that the time spent to gather information is reduced by about 70%.

Additionally, the accuracy of the data collected and organised is verified, allowing the companies to obtain a perspective on the feasibility of full-scale use.

Furthermore, the companies plan to expand the scope of their collaborative creation to undertake a range of demonstration experiments in the future.

Initially, Hitachi will launch a solution of automated technology for collection of information from medical literature to the pharmaceutical industry in Japan and overseas starting this year.

The solution is planned to be developed through collaborative creation using Hitachi’s IoT platform, ‘Lumada’.

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