View From The Horizon: Artificial Intelligence And Cannabusiness In London

On May 16 the second edition of our new global series, Life Sciences and Health Care Horizons, took place in London featuring two panel discussions that focused on the challenges and opportunities in two of the sector's emerging markets: (1) Artificial Intelligence; and (2) Cannabusiness. We are excited to share the following highlights from London, and we look forward to future discussions as we forecast and help clients prepare for what's to come.

The rise of the machines - AI and digital health

Artificial Intelligence (AI) covers a number of subfields such as robotics, machine learning, natural language and speech processing and deep learning and at our London Life Sciences and Health Care Horizons event, the panel discussions looked at the potential benefits of using AI in the drug design process including improving success rates for the development of new drugs and reducing the length of time, and money, spent on the initial design phase. The panel also discussed some of the legal and ethical questions that might arise with the use of AI.

Imogen Ireland, Senior Associate in the firm's Intellectual Property practice, discussed how AI is being used to discover lead compounds for therapeutic use. . Imogen noted that a key factor in the use of AI is that it can gather and review data in enormous quantities very quickly - AI can "review and process, in a matter of hours, data that could take teams of scientists years." Imogen noted, however, that the use of AI in drug discovery is likely to raise some interesting legal and regulatory considerations. In patent law, for instance, a key issue is whether or not it is possible to patent AI output and, if it is, who owns the output? Related to this is the issue of disclosure - in other words, explained Imogen, how do you demonstrate to others that your AI-developed drug works? What sort of data do you have to do this? If you are relying on algorithms, who do these algorithms belong to, and are they confidential? Such issues could be relevant when filing a patent for the AI-developed drug, or working with regulators at the clinical trial stage.

Dr. Sandeep Shah, CEO of Tarilian Laser Technologies, provided a practical example of how companies are making use of AI and innovative technology to improve health. Dr. Shah described how his company is taking advantage of AI technologies such as deep learning and neural networks to find more effective ways of handling the diagnosis and treatment of...