Last week, Reuters Events pulled together four seasoned medtech executives for a webinar to discuss what they are seeing in the world of Gen AI. They are:
Matic Meglic, Novartis, Global Executive Director, Industry Partnerships (Moderator).
Paula Antunes, Novo Nordisk, Global Regulatory Lead, Digital Health
Rohit Alimchandani, Cognizant, Head of Life Sciences, UK & I
Brandon Randall, Smith & Nephew, VP – Arthroscopic Enabling Technologies R&D
This link takes you to their recorded session, Solidify Your Medical Technology: Gen AI Strategies. Here are the top ten takeaways from their panel discussion:
- Generative AI has immense potential in medtech to improve product quality, safety, and speed to market, but there is also a lot of hype that needs to be navigated carefully.
- Specific use cases for generative AI in medtech include generating documentation, test reports, clinical evaluation reports, meeting notes, and improving field service and complaint management.
- Medtech companies should focus on utilizing their proprietary data to gain a competitive advantage with AI rather than just relying on off-the-shelf models.
- Integrating AI into strategy requires focusing on priority problems to solve, such as unmet customer needs, faster time to market, and product quality.
- Hybrid models with a small central AI COE and federated capabilities in business units seem to work well for driving innovation through healthy competition.
- Centralized funding for AI projects awarded to promising examples from BUs or countries can be effective for spurring adoption.
- Training the current workforce on AI tools is important and can be done through micro-learning, persona-based learning, and exploring AI-powered immersive learning.
- Build vs buy vs partner for AI capabilities depends on the specific use case, with a mix often being optimal. Having an ecosystem of external partners helps with innovation and scaling.
- Data privacy, especially around patient data, is a major concern and potential roadblock that needs to be carefully addressed, beyond just following regulations.
- Patient-facing AI tools have huge potential for personalized care but carry very high risks that most large medtech companies are not yet ready to take on, though startups may move faster here.
Bottom line, each of their companies is slow to the Gen AI game. Most of their references were to narrow AI – not Gen AI.
Many medtech companies are missing the opportunity to optimize individual workflows and business processes by failing to seize the Gen AI opportunity. You can do two things at once:
1. You can create guardrails with your company’s stance on AI, operating norms and rules and policies about its usage.
2. And you can train your knowledge workers to deploy Gen AI to become a Gen AI leaning company, that is more productive and allows people to do more interesting and value-added work.
Gen AI is the most transformative technology of our lifetime. It will drive the reshaping of work, cultures and companies. It will spur the reinvention of products, services and business models. First movers will reap the benefits. Sitting on the sidelines is not an option, particularly when your competitors are embracing the technology and upstarts have painted a target on your back and seek to disrupt your business. Gen AI can be implemented responsibly and assertively. Safeguards can be installed to protect privacy and to prevent unintended negative consequences, while the benefits of Gen AI are realized for optimization and acceleration of the business. Yet too many CEOs in medtech are slow rolling their Gen AI roll outs. Will there be a price to be paid for their slow adoption? What do you think?
