Artificial intelligence as a weapon in the fight against cancer

Medicines Discovery Catapult

Our Chief Informatics Officer, Professor John Overington, supports Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans to use AI as a weapon for fighting cancer:

“Harnessing artificial intelligence is vital for the future of medicine. Capable of not only providing earlier diagnosis in the fight against cancer and other diseases, but also breaking new ground in the understanding of complex diseases and the discovery of innovative, safe, and cost-effective new medicines.

Discovering new drugs, diagnostics, and biomarkers is a now a data science. It generates a huge quantity of complex biological, chemical, clinical and safety information.

Here at the Medicines Discovery Catapult we are committed to making the required data available and providing support to SMEs in its application. Using our deep expertise in scientific data analysis, natural language processing and machine learning, we will create actionable insights which support SMEs to make informed decisions and make the process of drug discovery quicker, cheaper and more predictable.

The challenge for the health service is indeed to create the right infrastructure but there is no doubt that when patient data is used responsibly, democratisation of medical knowledge and dissemination of technology will support patients to gain access to the best care.”

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Government press release >