Boehringer Ingelheim, Lifebit to use AI to detect infectious disease outbreaks

Boehringer Ingelheim has partnered with Lifebit Biotech to utilise artificial intelligence (AI) technology for the detection of global infectious disease outbreaks. 

The multi-year partnership will see Boehringer and Lifebit use AI and natural language processing (NLP) to detect and enable early reporting of global disease outbreaks, such as COVID-19.

As part of the deal, scientist from both companies will work together to combine real-world evidence with the ‘latest’ AI algorithms in a bid to identify infectious disease outbreaks and respond to these threats.

“External innovation is becoming an increasingly important aspect of our R&D playbook. Therefore, we are strategically partnering with Lifebit to leverage AI to monitor and interpret scientific and other sources in real-time, enabling us to track data related to animal diseases,” said Eric Haaksma, head of animal health global innovation Boehringer Ingelheim.

“This, in turn, will accelerate the detection process as the vast amounts of scientific relevant information being produced at many levels cannot be feasibly collected and analysed manually,” he added.

Lifebit’s AI-enabled real-world evidence (RWE) analysis system – REAL – uses advanced analytic capabilities to automatically let users known of any relevant outbreaks.

This system is built on active learning architectures, meaning that the more relevant data it takes in, the more accurate the system becomes.

It combines precision harvesting techniques with proprietary AI algorithms to identify signals within vast amounts of data, which Lifebit said can help decision-makers draw meaningful insights that are ‘both useful and actionable’.

“At Lifebit, we thrive on connecting both locked-up sensitive biomedical data from around the world and AI-driven automated RWE data insights, so that companies on the cutting edge of science, like Boehringer Ingelheim, can make faster and smarter decisions – delivering insights that change lives,” said Maria Chatzou-Dunford, chief executive officer of Lifebit.

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