The healthcare industry stands at a pivotal moment. Despite incredible advancement in pharmaceutical technology, approximately 2 billion people worldwide lack access to critical medicines and vaccines. Even in the United States, which spends more than $4.5 trillion on healthcare annually, an aging population and general inequity remain as major obstacles.

“We’ve extended our lifespan, but not our healthspan,” says Emma Walmsley, the CEO of British pharmaceutical giant GSK. In a conversation with Columbia Business School Dean Costis Maglaras as part of the School’s Distinguished Speaker Series, Walmsley explained that while innovation is high, the industry still has a ways to go in bending the demand curve around healthcare.

Fortunately, technology, including the promise of AI, is helping companies like GSK get ahead of the competition through research and development, while also improving consumers’ health outcomes and lowering costs. New advancements in machine learning have allowed for improvements in productivity and efficiency across the drug discovery and development process. AI is used to better identify biological targets, model clinical trials, and predict patient responses, according to Walmsley.

New platform technologies are making waves as well. Advancements in mRNA, gene therapy, and oligonucleotides, for example, have allowed manufacturers to develop innovative treatments for previously untreatable diseases. 

“You can suddenly develop a vaccine in two years during a global pandemic or super persistent targeting in new oncology medicines,” Walmsley said.

Walmsley shared three key insights into how the evolving landscape of the healthcare industry, innovation, and how leaders can harness the power of new tech.

The Incentive Problem

The current US healthcare model leaves little in terms of incentive to help people get less sick, according to Walmsley. The country spends approximately $9 billion annually on vaccine-treatable diseases, she noted. This leads to an unsustainable system focused on treatment rather than prevention.

“It's better for everybody to stop the disease. It's better for the patient, it's better for economic productivity and participation in the workforce, but also reduces the cost of healthcare,” Walmsley says. “It reduces the burden on overstretched hospitals. There is no better return on investment in healthcare than vaccination, apart from clean water.”

Despite these hurdles, Walmsley highlighted that the United States continues to be a country that values and incentivizes healthcare innovation, and that access to innovation is a critical component of improving healthcare outcomes. The protection of intellectual property and the availability of high-quality teaching hospitals, make the US a ripe location for business development, she added.

Creating the World’s First RSV Vaccine

AI is and will be responsible for a number of innovative applications in healthcare, according to Walmsley. Improving drug discovery, molecule design, and patient selection for clinical trials are just a few of the ways that AI is accelerating GSK’s R&D processes.

Walmsley highlighted how GSK used AI to cut two years off of a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) clinical trial. By using AI to track where infections were spreading, GSK researchers were able to set up trial sites more efficiently based on the geographic spread of the disease. 

The vaccine, known as Arexvy, was the world’s first-ever RSV vaccine. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its use for adults 60 and older in 2023.

“We are seeing new solutions being brought to previously unpreventable infectious diseases,” Walmsley says.

The Promise of AI — and People

AI can also assist with patient phenotyping and genotyping, which can then be combined with already-known information about molecules and targets to identify subgroups of patients with a higher probability of success for a particular treatment, according to Walmsley. It can also help design more precise clinical trials by using biomarkers, which can further increase the probability of success in trials.

“The question more and more for all of us in the industry is, ‘can we harness the promise of our understanding of biology, the promise of the capability of technology and with both new kinds of innovation and new policy, try and get ahead of disease at an earlier stage?’ Prevent it before it starts or intervene to keep people out of the hospital and keep people well for longer. Keep the cost of healthcare down but keep the outcomes improving in a way that's fair for more people.”

While Walmsley noted that AI will certainly boost productivity, she made clear that having the right team of people is also paramount.

“It's certainly not all about the CEO. It is all about the quality of the people that you have around you. Everyone thinks the answer to every question these days is AI. It isn't. The answer to every question these days is all about the people. If you have a technically brilliant, aligned, energetic, committed, diverse, team, you can achieve absolutely anything,” Walmsley said.

Walmsley added that AI has great potential to improve efficiency in back office operations as well, such as in sales, marketing, and financial forecasting. She stressed that as AI’s use grows, however, leaders in healthcare should continue to make the prevention of disease a priority.