AMRITSAR: Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Guru Nanak Dev University, under the patronage of Vice Chancellor Prof. Karamjeet Singh, organized a lecture on “AI in Health Care”.
Prof. Harish Dureja, Dean Research & Development; Dean Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, an eminent scientist with more than 300 research publications and editor of more than 10 books delivered the expert talk. The online talk was attended by more than 100 students and faculty members. Prof. Dureja stated that AI is based on machine learning and comprises highly involved advanced neural networking. He emphasized that artificial intelligence is defining the future of pharmaceutical industry as well as medicine.
Especially, post covid, there has been a boom in AI based interventions. While discussing the technicalities involved, he deliberated that robotic surgeries are a big breakthrough in orthopedics. Similarly, in pharmaceutical industry there AI guided drug manufacturing.
The significance of AI in new drug development was also shared that now the approach for “Molecule to market” is enabled Leapfrog Digital Innovation which expedites the whole process and is replacing traditional practices.
The speaker explained the concept with real examples including AI based robot Adam that predicted as many as nine new hypotheses related to yeasts with exceptional accuracy while Eve, another robot was instrumental in discovering that triclosan, a common ingredient of toothpastes was useful in combating malarial parasite. Digitalized health industry is the next transformative result expected of use of artificial intelligence. CureApp developed by Japan is the world’s first digital therapeutic app to monitor hypertension.An AI based while UK based Medopad (now called Huma) in collaboration with Tencent, a Chinese conglomerate is developing an AI based tool for detection and monitoring of Parkinson’s disease at King’s College London.
The lecture was followed by highly participative group discussion by the students who raised various queries which were answered by the resource person. Dr. Amrit Pal Singh, the acted as the moderator for the online talk. The session started with introductory remarks by the head of the department Prof. Rajbir Bhatti, welcome by Prof. PMS Bedi and concluded with vote of thanks by the coordinator Dr.NeenaBedi