- 35 minutes 28 secondsE215: Location, Location, Innovation: AI Site Twins and the New Era of Site Selection
Clinical trial site selection is one of the biggest hidden bottlenecks in drug development, and it’s still often driven by legacy relationships, spreadsheets, and habit. In this episode, Dr Andree Bates interviews Simon Arkell, founder of Ryght, Inc, about “AI Site Twins” and why the next era of site selection shifts from institutional memory to predictive, real-time analytics.
Simon explains why the current model produces terrible outcomes at scale: too many activated sites under-enrol, competition at sites is poorly understood, and sponsors often don’t see the failure until timelines have already slipped. He argues this is primarily a site selection problem, because “the easy button” of re-using familiar sites reduces data-driven decision making, even as trials get more complex and patient competition intensifies.
Ryght’s approach is to build AI-powered digital replicas of research sites, creating a unique identifier and a dynamic “twin” profile that continuously improves as new data arrives. Simon walks through how protocols can be matched to sites across countries, then enriched using harmonised public data, competitive trial context, and automated outreach that dramatically increases engagement. He also describes how different AI agents help fill missing information, find the right contacts, and capture context across email, portals, and voice interactions to improve future matching.
The upside is massive: faster feasibility, better site choices, shorter time-to-activation, earlier first-patient-in, and ultimately faster time-to-market. Simon links these operational gains to commercial reality: every month saved can mean earlier revenue, longer effective patent runway, and more lives impacted by getting therapies to patients sooner.
Topics Covered
Why site selection is still a major bottleneck in clinical trials
The true cost of underperforming sites and enrolment failure
What an AI Site Twin is and how it differs from legacy databases
Global protocol-to-site matching and competitive trial context
Data harmonisation from messy public sources
Agent workflows: enrichment, outreach, contact finding, and context capture
Engagement rates and accelerating feasibility timelines
Enrolment curve modelling and predicting site performance
Security, HIPAA/GDPR compliance, and sponsor data integration
Time-to-activation, first-patient-in, and time-to-last-patient-in KPIs
Why “execution speed” and flywheels create a moat in AI applications
Eularis helps pharma and biotech leaders turn AI activity into board-defensible strategy and measurable commercial outcomes.
If your organisation has plenty of AI in motion but very little that moves the commercial needle in a way the board can see, start with our 10-Day AI Diagnostic Sprint. It’s a focused diagnostic that surfaces what’s actually broken and what’s blocking results, before you invest in a larger strategy effort.
The Sprint diagnoses the problem. The AI Strategic Blueprint that follows is where we build the board-defensible strategy and plan.Details at eularis.com.
About the Podcast
AI For Pharma Growth is the podcast from pioneering Pharma Artificial Intelligence entrepreneur Dr Andree Bates, created to help pharma, biotech and healthcare organisations understand how AI-based technologies can save time, grow brands, and improve company results.This show blends deep sector experience with practical conversations that demystify AI for biopharma leaders, from start-up biotech right through to Big Pharma. Each episode features experts building AI-powered tools that are driving real-world results across discovery, R&D, clinical trials, medical affairs, market access, regulatory, insights, sales, marketing, and more.
28 April 2026, 11:01 pm - 38 minutes 55 secondsE214: Beyond Copilot
For many life sciences teams, the first wave of AI has looked like copilots: smart search, quick answers, and help on demand. Useful, but passive. In this episode, Dr Andree Bates is joined by Parth Khanna, CEO and co-founder of ACTO, to explore what comes next: moving beyond copilots into role-based AI agents that proactively close knowledge gaps, improve field readiness, and operate safely inside regulated environments.
Parth shares his path into life sciences and tech, including founding an early NLP company in 2012 and then building ACTO after speaking with over 100 life science companies about field force effectiveness. Today, ACTO supports tens of thousands of professionals and hundreds of brand launches, and Parth argues the industry is now entering the “agentic era” where the real differentiator is not just model access, but how organisations build context, control, and change management around AI.
A key theme is why generic AI tools often fail inside enterprises. Parth outlines four requirements for agent success: context (role and job-specific personalisation), connection (stitching data sources and agent-to-agent workflows), control (testing, monitoring, observability), and change management (reducing fear and driving adoption). Without these, he says, many copilots and assistants end up underused, with people quietly reverting to old workflows.
Parth then introduces ACTO’s concept of role-based “super agents”, designed around a real job description (for example an MSL). Rather than a disconnected swarm of task bots, a “queen bee” orchestrator agent delegates to worker agents, checks outputs against compliance guardrails, and can be assessed with exams to quantify risk before deployment. This approach, he argues, makes AI both more powerful and safer for regulated field teams.
Finally, the conversation looks ahead. Parth believes the future of work depends on pairing AI capability with distinctly human strengths: strategy, judgement, and human connection. The winners won’t be those who automate the most tasks, but those who redesign roles so humans and agents amplify each other.
Topics Covered
Why copilots are useful but fundamentally passive
The shift from AI that responds to AI that acts
Why generic tools fail: context, connection, control, change management
Adoption reality: why many AI assistants go unused
Quantifying risk and moving from black box to observable AI
Role-based super agents and the “queen bee” orchestrator model
Testing agents with exams before field deployment
Guardrails, compliance, and agent-to-agent quality checks
Human skills AI can’t replace: strategy, judgement, connection
The future of MSL and field excellence in an agentic era
Eularis helps pharma and biotech leaders turn AI activity into board-defensible strategy and measurable commercial outcomes.
If your organisation has plenty of AI in motion but very little that moves the commercial needle in a way the board can see, start with our 10-Day AI Diagnostic Sprint. It’s a focused diagnostic that surfaces what’s actually broken and what’s blocking results, before you invest in a larger strategy effort.
The Sprint diagnoses the problem. The AI Strategic Blueprint that follows is where we build the board-defensible strategy and plan.
Details at eularis.com.
About the Podcast
AI For Pharma Growth is the podcast from pioneering Pharma Artificial Intelligence entrepreneur Dr Andree Bates, created to help pharma, biotech and healthcare organisations understand how AI-based technologies can save time, grow brands, and improve company results.
This show blends deep sector experience with practical conversations that demystify AI for biopharma leaders, from start-up biotech right through to Big Pharma. Each episode features experts building AI-powered tools that are driving real-world results across discovery, R&D, clinical trials, medical affairs, market access, regulatory, insights, sales, marketing, and more.
21 April 2026, 11:01 pm - 27 minutes 23 secondsE213: The Diagnostic Room: We have AI initiatives, but do we have a strategy? The quickest self-test
Many pharma and life science organisations have been investing in AI for years: pilots across commercial, medical, regulatory, and R&D, innovation labs, steering committees, vendor spend, and genuine effort from smart teams. And yet the same story keeps showing up in boardrooms: ROI is unclear, adoption is patchy, and leaders struggle to explain how all the AI activity connects to strategic goals.
In this solo episode, Dr Andree Bates steps into “The Diagnostic Room” to explain why this happens, and why it’s usually not a technology, talent, or speed issue. It’s a diagnosis issue: organisations often haven’t identified what is actually constraining value, so they end up executing hard on the wrong problem.
Dr Andree shares a real example from a mid-sized pharma company that believed its AI programme was failing due to lack of velocity. On the surface, it was a reasonable hypothesis. But a focused diagnostic revealed three hidden structural blockers: unclear decision rights for scaling pilots into production, fragmented data ownership preventing access to the best datasets, and incentive misalignment where the people expected to adopt AI tools were not rewarded for the behaviours those tools required.
She then clarifies what a diagnostic is and is not. A diagnostic is not a strategy, roadmap, vendor shortlist, financial model, or implementation plan. Instead, it provides evidence-based clarity: what’s broken, how you compare to peers, what’s at stake, and what questions have been opened that cannot responsibly be answered in ten days. That clarity creates a shared language for leadership, replacing vague frustration with a precise problem statement.
The organisations pulling ahead are not simply those with the biggest budgets, but those willing to find what’s actually broken before trying to fix it.
Topics Covered
Why AI initiatives can grow without creating measurable ROI
The gap between pilots and a true AI strategy
Misdiagnosis: executing brilliantly on the wrong problem
What a diagnostic sprint is (and what it is not)
Three hidden blockers
Why working groups can’t fix structural AI constraints
What a full strategic AI blueprint includes
Why many AI business cases are untested projections
How to improve board confidence with evidence, governance, and measurement
Why diagnostics create speed by creating shared clarity
Eularis helps pharma and biotech leaders turn AI activity into board-defensible strategy and measurable commercial outcomes.
If your organisation has plenty of AI in motion but very little that moves the commercial needle in a way the board can see, start with our 10-Day AI Diagnostic Sprint. It’s a focused diagnostic that surfaces what’s actually broken and what’s blocking results, before you invest in a larger strategy effort.
The Sprint diagnoses the problem. The AI Strategic Blueprint that follows is where we build the board-defensible strategy and plan.
Details at eularis.com.
About the Podcast
AI For Pharma Growth is the podcast from pioneering Pharma Artificial Intelligence entrepreneur Dr Andree Bates, created to help pharma, biotech and healthcare organisations understand how AI-based technologies can save time, grow brands, and improve company results.
This show blends deep sector experience with practical conversations that demystify AI for biopharma leaders, from start-up biotech right through to Big Pharma. Each episode features experts building AI-powered tools that are driving real-world results across discovery, R&D, clinical trials, medical affairs, market access, regulatory, insights, sales, marketing, and more.
If this episode described your situation, send me a LinkedIn DM starting with ‘SENSECHECK’ and two things: the question you’re trying to answer internally, and what’s currently in flight. I’ll reply with what I’d need to see to turn that activity into a defensible plan, and the next step.
14 April 2026, 11:01 pm - 17 minutes 36 secondsE212: The Ethics of AI
AI ethics has moved from theory to urgent necessity, especially as AI systems become embedded in healthcare, business decisions, and society at large. In this episode, Dr Andree Bates is joined by Dr Nadia Morozova, founder of Enriched Insights, to unpack what ethical AI really means in practice, and how organisations can innovate quickly without creating risk, bias, or governance failures.
Nadia shares insights from the global conversation on AI ethics, including discussions at Davos, and explains why trust is becoming the true competitive advantage. She argues that organisations should use AI to build stronger, more open relationships with customers and stakeholders, where technology acts as an enabler rather than the centrepiece.
The conversation then gets practical. Nadia outlines a human-centric framework for high-quality AI outcomes, covering accurate sampling, futureproofing (because models are trained on the past), data connectivity across sources, and responsible blending of human and synthetic data. She warns that leadership teams often treat AI as “magic”, assuming tools will solve complex problems like data harmonisation without the hard work of ontology, governance, and expert oversight.
A real-world example brings this to life: the Zillow case, where initial success collapsed as market dynamics shifted and the model failed to adapt in time, leading to huge losses. For Nadia, the lesson is clear: ethical responsibility is not a checkbox at launch, it requires ongoing monitoring, review, and culture change.
Nadia closes with a strategic message for leaders: start with business goals and targeted use cases, involve data experts early, build governance upfront, and keep humans in the loop throughout the AI lifecycle. Done properly, ethical AI is not a constraint on innovation, it is how you protect long-term value and trust.
Topics Covered
Why AI ethics is now an urgent business and societal issue
Trust, transparency, and accountability in AI deployment
Human centricity as the foundation of high data quality
Accurate sampling and avoiding “biased reality” in models
Why futureproofing matters when algorithms learn from the past
Data connectivity, governance, and the ontology problem
Responsible blending of human and synthetic data
Dangerous leadership assumptions about AI “magic”
The Zillow case and what happens without ongoing oversight
Strategy first: KPIs, targeted use cases, and right-sized models
Skills gaps: technical roles, business acumen, and cross-functional teams
Culture change and post-deployment monitoring
About the Podcast
AI For Pharma Growth is the podcast from pioneering Pharma Artificial Intelligence entrepreneur Dr Andree Bates, created to help pharma, biotech and healthcare organisations understand how AI-based technologies can save time, grow brands, and improve company results.
This show blends deep sector experience with practical conversations that demystify AI for biopharma leaders, from start-up biotech right through to Big Pharma. Each episode features experts building AI-powered tools that are driving real-world results across discovery, R&D, clinical trials, medical affairs, market access, regulatory, insights, sales, marketing, and more.
7 April 2026, 11:01 pm - 32 minutes 32 secondsE211: Precision Monitoring: How Digital Biomarkers Are Changing Medicine
Digital biomarkers are turning everyday movement into clinically useful data, giving doctors a clearer picture of what’s happening between appointments, and giving pharma new ways to measure drug impact earlier and more precisely. In this episode, Dr Andree Bates interviews Dr Quique Llaudet, CEO and co-founder of Ephion Health, about precision monitoring and how AI-driven mobility analysis is changing both clinical care and drug development.
Quique shares his journey from academic research into entrepreneurship, driven by a desire to turn science into real products that help patients. Ephion Health grew out of early work with paediatric hospitals in Barcelona, where sensor technology used in rehabilitation and exoskeleton projects revealed a bigger opportunity: objective, high-sensitivity gait and movement analysis that can detect disease signatures and track progression over time.
The conversation breaks down what a digital biomarker actually is: a measurable signal of health captured via connected devices and analysed with digital methods. Ephion’s platform integrates multiple validated, off-the-shelf sensors to capture rich movement data in a short test, replacing blunt measures like the six-minute walk test with something both more sensitive and less stressful for patients. The system then combines key parameters into a single composite score to track progression and treatment response.
Quique also tackles the “black box” concern head on. He explains how their models are developed alongside clinicians, with clinical relevance checked throughout, and how doctors can inspect the underlying parameters behind the biomarker score in a dashboard. For rare diseases with limited data, he highlights deep collaboration with clinicians and patient associations, and the use of synthetic data to support modelling and testing.
Finally, Quique outlines the economics: reducing specialist assessment time, enabling more frequent remote monitoring, supporting earlier treatment adjustments, and helping pharma generate evidence in real-world settings. The long-term vision is continuous monitoring that helps clinicians act earlier, plus AI-assisted diagnosis and eventually prevention.
Topics Covered
What digital biomarkers are and how they differ from traditional biomarkers
Turning mobility data into clinically meaningful signals
Multi-sensor monitoring: IMUs, pressure insoles, and EMG
Why short tests can beat the six-minute walk test
Composite biomarker scoring and tracking treatment response
AI patterns clinicians may sense but cannot quantify
Explainability and building models “hand in hand” with doctors
Data challenges in rare disease and the role of patient associations
Synthetic data for modelling and validation
Economic impact: time savings, remote monitoring, and better treatment adjustment
Pharma use cases: real-world evidence and earlier efficacy signals in trials
About the PodcastAI For Pharma Growth is the podcast from pioneering Pharma Artificial Intelligence entrepreneur Dr Andree Bates, created to help pharma, biotech and healthcare organisations understand how AI-based technologies can save time, grow brands, and improve company results.
This show blends deep sector experience with practical conversations that demystify AI for biopharma leaders, from start-up biotech right through to Big Pharma. Each episode features experts building AI-powered tools that are driving real-world results across discovery, R&D, clinical trials, medical affairs, market access, regulatory, insights, sales, marketing, and more.
31 March 2026, 11:01 pm - 32 minutes 13 secondsE210: Beyond Alzheimer’s: Scaling Digital Twins Across Disease Areas
Digital twins have become one of the most promising tools in Alzheimer’s research, but the bigger story is what happens when they scale across disease areas. In this episode, Dr Andree Bates interviews Aaron Smith, Founder and Head of Machine Learning at Unlearn AI, about how “digital twin generators” can transform trial design by modelling realistic patient progression and improving statistical power without compromising the fundamentals of randomised controlled trials.
Aaron shares his journey from academic mathematics into computer vision and machine learning, then into biopharma, where Unlearn began by building generative models that learn the joint distribution of clinical variables. In practice, that means the model can take baseline patient measurements and generate likely future progressions that are as indistinguishable from real clinical records as possible.
The conversation dives into a key misconception: digital twins are not only about replacing control arms. Aaron explains a regulatory friendly approach where you keep standard trial structure, but add counterfactual information for every patient into the analysis. Unlearn’s best known method, ProCOVA (prognostic covariate adjustment), summarises a predicted control outcome per patient and uses it for covariate adjustment, creating more efficient treatment effect estimates. The headline result is simple: you can increase power, or reduce recruitment burden while maintaining power, potentially speeding time to results.
Finally, Aaron explains why scaling across diseases is genuinely hard. Data structures differ wildly by indication, missingness can block transfer learning, and areas like oncology require modelling complex treatment histories. He also highlights that combining sources is not just “more data”, it demands careful harmonisation and context modelling to avoid biased predictions, especially when bringing in real world evidence.
Topics Covered
What “digital twin generators” are in clinical trials
Generative modelling of clinical records and disease progression
Counterfactual prediction under standard of care
Why replacing control arms is not the only use case
ProCOVA and prognostic covariate adjustment
Getting more statistical power and reducing trial size
FDA openness to digital twins in trials and what it enables
Why scaling across disease areas is not just parameter tuning
Missing data, confounding context, and data harmonisation
CNS versus oncology modelling challenges
Real world evidence and how to validate digital twin models
About the Podcast
AI For Pharma Growth is the podcast from pioneering Pharma Artificial Intelligence entrepreneur Dr Andree Bates, created to help pharma, biotech and healthcare organisations understand how AI-based technologies can save time, grow brands, and improve company results.
This show blends deep sector experience with practical conversations that demystify AI for biopharma leaders, from start-up biotech right through to Big Pharma. Each episode features experts building AI-powered tools that are driving real-world results across discovery, R&D, clinical trials, medical affairs, market access, regulatory, insights, sales, marketing, and more.
Dr. Andree Bates LinkedIn | Facebook | X
25 March 2026, 12:01 am - 46 minutes 32 secondsE209: Beyond Failure Prevention: How AI is Redesigning the Drug Discovery Pipeline
AI in drug development is moving beyond “failure prevention” into something much bigger: redesigning how we discover, develop, and deliver medicines. In this episode, Dr Andree Bates speaks with Vitalay Fomin of Numenos about biomarker discovery, patient stratification, and why the next breakthroughs come from breaking down data silos across diseases, modalities, and even species.
Vitalay shares his background across biotech and pharma, including work in biomarker discovery, translational medicine, and data science, and how frustration with existing approaches led her to build a new architecture for clinical genomic insights. A core theme is that traditional methods often oversimplify biology by forcing outcomes into binary labels and treating each disease area as an isolated box, even when the available data is too limited to answer meaningful questions well.
The conversation explores how foundation model approaches can unify clinical, genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and imaging signals to create a fuller “biological fingerprint” of each patient. Vitalay explains how this can enable earlier insight from single-arm trials by effectively benchmarking against standard-of-care cohorts, helping teams enrich later-stage trials with the right subpopulations sooner, and reducing time and cost.
They also discuss the real blockers to adoption: not only scientific conservatism, but commercial uncertainty around how Big Pharma structures deals with tech-bio companies that bring platforms rather than single assets. Vitalay argues that explainability is non-negotiable in this space, because clinicians, scientists, patients, and regulators will not trust black-box predictions.
Topics Covered
Why AI is shifting from failure prevention to pipeline redesign
Biomarker discovery beyond binary responder vs non-responder labels
Breaking disease silos to learn across indications
Multimodal integration: DNA, RNA, protein, imaging, and clinical data
Using foundation models to bridge trial data and real-world data
Patient stratification and trial enrichment from early studies
Reverse translation and identifying unmet need before target hunting
Explainability, trust, and regulatory readiness
Adoption barriers: culture, champions, and deal structures for tech-bio
Misconceptions about AI in drug development and why “press a button” is a myth
About the Podcast
AI For Pharma Growth is the podcast from pioneering Pharma Artificial Intelligence entrepreneur Dr Andree Bates, created to help pharma, biotech and healthcare organisations understand how AI-based technologies can save time, grow brands, and improve company results.
This show blends deep sector experience with practical conversations that demystify AI for biopharma leaders, from start-up biotech right through to Big Pharma. Each episode features experts building AI-powered tools that are driving real-world results across discovery, R&D, clinical trials, medical affairs, market access, regulatory, insights, sales, marketing, and more.
18 March 2026, 12:01 am - 31 minutes 13 secondsE208 : The future of enterprise AI: agents, automation, and trust
Enterprise AI is shifting from experiments to infrastructure, and that changes everything. In this episode, Dr Andree Bates interviews Jocelyn Houle, Senior Director of Product Management at Securiti.ai, to explore the future of enterprise AI, agents, automation, and the single biggest blocker to scale: trust.
Jocelyn shares what she is seeing across highly regulated industries as organisations move beyond proof of concept into production. She explains why the agent era raises the stakes: when you add LLMs into workflows, systems become non-deterministic and harder to trace end to end. In her words, once the data goes in, you cannot easily untangle it, so organisations need stronger controls around permissions, auditing, and policy enforcement.
A major theme is that data foundations matter more than ever. Jocelyn warns that agents will not magically repair messy data, they will expose weak data quality immediately. From there, she outlines how trust can be won or lost at the prompt layer, both outbound (what the model says to customers) and inbound (what users share with the organisation). She also discusses “toxic combinations”, where overlapping access can accidentally leak sensitive information, plus the growing need for prompt screening and tracking to reduce risk.
The conversation also digs into explainability and auditability, with Jocelyn being refreshingly honest that the perfect solution is not here yet. Instead, enterprises are using practical approaches like benchmarking releases side by side, cataloguing AI agents in use, and building governance that is starting to look more like modern cybersecurity: baked in from the start, not added as an afterthought.
Jocelyn closes with clear advice for leaders: start “left” with raw data controls, build a truly cross-functional team, and begin setting up auditability even with imperfect tools, because regulators are catching up and they will expect responsible behaviour.
Topics Covered
Where enterprise AI adoption really stands today
What makes AI agents different from traditional automation
Non-determinism, traceability, and why permissions matter
Data mapping, policy controls, and reducing sensitive data leakage
Prompt security: outbound and inbound trust risks
“Toxic combinations” and exposure through agent workflows
Explainability, benchmarking, and parallel release testing
AI governance becoming as essential as cybersecurity
Top 3 pieces of advice for CTOs starting their AI journey
Why enterprise AI will become so embedded we stop talking about it
AI For Pharma Growth is the podcast from pioneering Pharma Artificial Intelligence entrepreneur Dr Andree Bates, created to help pharma, biotech and healthcare organisations understand how AI-based technologies can save time, grow brands, and improve company results.
This show blends deep sector experience with practical conversations that demystify AI for biopharma leaders, from start-up biotech right through to Big Pharma. Each episode features experts building AI-powered tools that are driving real-world results across discovery, R&D, clinical trials, medical affairs, market access, regulatory, insights, sales, marketing, and more.
Dr. Andree Bates LinkedIn | Facebook | X
About the Podcast11 March 2026, 12:01 am - 33 minutes 29 secondsE207: The economics of clinical trials and the relationship to AI
Clinical trials are a massive industry with brutal economics, long timelines, and failure rates that would be unacceptable in almost any other sector. In this episode, Dr Andree Bates is joined by Dr Joseph Geraci of NetraMark to break down why trials fail so often, how patient heterogeneity drives cost and uncertainty, and where AI can realistically shift the economics.
Joseph shares his unusual path from mathematics and mathematical physics into oncology and medical science, including a decision to move into hospital research rather than follow a more traditional academic route. That shift shaped his focus: not just discovering more molecules, but understanding why the same drug can work brilliantly for some patients and fail for others.
A central theme is that clinical trials are not “one disease, one patient type”. In many areas, disease definitions are too broad for trial design, making trials feel like trying to hit multiple dartboards with one dart. Joseph explains how NetraMark’s approach aims to identify meaningful subpopulations inside small datasets, finding the “pocket” where a drug’s true advantage shows up, without discarding patients as outliers.
The conversation also touches on regulators, including growing interest in innovation pathways, but also the fear pharma teams have about changing protocols and risking setbacks. Joseph argues that AI’s biggest economic value in trials is speed, using better insight from limited trial data to guide enrichment strategies, smarter substudy decisions, and faster iteration, especially in oncology and rare disease where time is everything.
Topics Covered
Why clinical trial economics are becoming unsustainable
Patient heterogeneity and why disease definitions break trials
Finding “pockets” of responders within small datasets
Trial enrichment and substudies that reveal a drug’s advantage
Why pharma adoption can be slow, even when failures are constant
Regulatory interest, guidelines, and sponsor risk aversion
Large language models vs mathematically augmented AI approaches
Speed as the biggest economic lever in trials
Practical examples across depression, schizophrenia, oncology, and beyond
What clinical trials could look like in five years with AI-driven insight
This show blends deep sector experience with practical conversations that demystify AI for biopharma leaders, from start-up biotech right through to Big Pharma. Each episode features experts building AI-powered tools that are driving real-world results across discovery, R&D, clinical trials, medical affairs, market access, regulatory, insights, sales, marketing, and more.
4 March 2026, 12:01 am - 36 minutes 42 secondsEP206: Why Your Pharma AI Strategy Is Probably Broken — And What a Real Blueprint Looks Like
AI capability has never been higher, yet most pharma AI programmes are still failing to create measurable business impact. In this solo episode, Dr Andree Bates breaks down why many pharma and biotech AI strategies are “broken before they even begin” and what a real AI strategic blueprint needs to include if you want adoption, scale, and outcomes, not just impressive pilots.
Dr Andree explains the core paradox: AI can now synthesise literature at speed, accelerate discovery, and outperform human experts in specific tasks, but the business results are often disappointing because the failure is rarely technical. It is strategic. She describes the “technical obsession trap”, where organisations spend months optimising models and benchmarking competitors while adoption remains low and teams are not operationally ready to act on the outputs.
She outlines three common failure modes:
Innovation Theatre, where disconnected pilots never compound into enterprise value
Competitor benchmarking, where companies copy use cases that do not fit their context
Technology first strategy, where tools are bought before priorities are defined
From there, she maps what a strong pharma AI blueprint must cover: grounding in business objectives, end to end deployment architecture (data, governance, capability, change), leadership and culture, rigorous financial modelling tied to revenue and ROI, and alignment across functions including commercial, medical, regulatory, R&D, market access, insights, and tech teams.
Dr Andree closes with a clear challenge for leadership: competitive advantage will come to organisations that build the most intelligent operating model around AI, not those with the biggest budgets. She also offers a 45 minute AI strategic diagnostic for pharma and biotech leaders who want an honest read on what to fix before investing further.
Topics Covered
Why pharma AI impact often disappoints despite powerful tools
The “technical obsession trap” and the AI strategy blind spot
Innovation Theatre, competitor benchmarking, and technology first mistakes
What a pharma AI strategic blueprint must include
Governance as a foundation for scale and regulatory trust
Leadership, culture, and adoption as the real differentiators
Financial modelling and prioritisation based on ROI and revenue impact
Organisational alignment across the full pharma value chain
Choosing the right advisory partner and avoiding generic frameworks
Why strategy must come before technology to build durable advantage
AI For Pharma Growth is the podcast from pioneering Pharma Artificial Intelligence entrepreneur Dr Andree Bates, created to help pharma, biotech and healthcare organisations understand how AI-based technologies can save time, grow brands, and improve company results.
This show blends deep sector experience with practical conversations that demystify AI for biopharma leaders, from start-up biotech right through to Big Pharma. Each episode features experts building AI-powered tools that are driving real-world results across discovery, R&D, clinical trials, medical affairs, market access, regulatory, insights, sales, marketing, and more.
25 February 2026, 12:01 am - 26 minutes 9 secondsE205: Healthcare Accessibility & Innovation
Healthcare accessibility is still being held hostage by phone queues, missed calls, and clunky portals. In this episode, Dr Andree Bates sits down with Josh Taylor of TxtSquad to explore why simple, secure texting can remove friction for patients and providers, and how AI can support the conversation without making care feel robotic.
Josh explains why SMS works where apps often fail: it is familiar, low effort, and asynchronous. That means patients can reply on their own time, while care teams can manage conversations in a way that fits real clinic workflows instead of forcing everyone into yet another platform.
They dig into the pharma and adherence angle too. Josh shares how two-way messaging helps teams move beyond generic reminders and uncover the real reasons people stop taking medication, opening the door to earlier support, smarter interventions, and better outcomes.
Finally, Josh outlines where AI adds value inside messaging: triage for common questions, translation, summarisation, and staff copilots. He also highlights the importance of compliance, clear boundaries, and human oversight when dealing with sensitive health information. The future, he suggests, is smarter communication across SMS, voice, and phone-based assistants, designed to meet patients where they already are.
Topics Covered
Why portals and apps struggle with adoption in healthcare
SMS as a low-barrier, asynchronous engagement channel
Building a two-way patient to provider communication loop
Medication adherence: understanding drop-off, not just sending reminders
Patient assistance programmes and support at scale
Clinical trial recruitment and retention using messaging
AI in messaging: triage, translation, summarisation, and staff copilots
Compliance considerations and handling sensitive information
What comes next: voice agents and deeper integration with phone workflows
About the Podcast
AI for Pharma Growth is a podcast focused on exploring how artificial intelligence can revolutionise healthcare by addressing disparities and creating equitable systems. Join us as we unpack groundbreaking technologies, real-world applications, and expert insights to inspire a healthier, more equitable future.
This show brings together leading experts and changemakers to demystify AI and show how it’s being used to transform healthcare. Whether you're in the medical field, technology sector, or just curious about AI’s role in social good, this podcast offers valuable insights.
AI For Pharma Growth is the podcast from pioneering Pharma Artificial Intelligence entrepreneur Dr Andree Bates created to help organisations understand how the use of AI based technologies can easily save them time and grow their brands and business. This show blends deep experience in the sector with demystifying AI for all pharma people, from start up biotech right through to Big Pharma. In this podcast Dr Andree will teach you the tried and true secrets to building a pharma company using AI that anyone can use, at any budget.
As the author of many peer-reviewed journals and having addressed over 500 industry conferences across the globe, Dr Andree Bates uses her obsession with all things AI and futuretech to help you to navigate through the, sometimes confusing but, magical world of AI powered tools to grow pharma businesses.
This podcast features many experts who have developed powerful AI powered tools that are the secret behind some time saving and supercharged revenue generating business
18 February 2026, 12:01 am - More Episodes? Get the App