Machine learning and real-world data are helping researchers identify new uses for existing drugs. Health IT Analytics brought this interesting information to our attention in their article, “Machine Learning, Real-World Data Find New Uses for Existing Drugs.”
Finding new purposes for existing drugs lowers the risk associated with testing and dramatically reduces the time it takes to get a drug to market. Discovering these new applications is called drug repurposing.
Discovering new uses for existing medications normally requires researchers to conduct time-consuming and expensive randomized controlled trials to make sure that a drug that’s effective for one disorder will be useful to treat other conditions.
Machine learning methods can see real-time data to move the process further and faster. The machine learning algorithm can take into account the passage of time in each patient’s experience, including every visit, prescription and diagnostic test.
The results show the potential for machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to accelerate drug repurposing, saving researchers both time and money.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.
