A collaboration between multinational pharmaceutical company Novartis and technological giant Microsoft aims to bring AI to the desk of every Novartis employee.

Novartis announced its plan for founding the Novartis AI innovation lab in collaboration with Microsoft as the AI and data-science partner. The Novartis-Microsoft alliance will “reimagine medicine” and boost Novartis’ AI capabilities. The new lab will discover and develop transformative medicine for patients globally.

Novartis-Microsoft alliance in multi-year R&D effort

The new lab will be the centerpiece of the collaboration and focus on a two-pronged objective.

‘AI Empowerment’ will make Novartis datasets and Microsoft’s AI solutions accessible to every Novartis associate.

‘AI Exploration’ will harness AI to tackle the most difficult computational challenges faced by the life sciences industry.

Further, the Novartis-Microsoft alliance will develop AI applications for future lab programs.

Microsoft AI

Microsoft AI helps transform business by driving innovation. It is already in use at The Hershey Company, NHS Glasgow and Clyde, BP, Jet.com and Schneider Electric.

For example, Schneider developed a predictive analytics solution based on machine learning and IoT. Energy producers use it to monitor remote equipment — saving maintenance costs, optimizing production, and increasing safety for workers and the environment.

Also, Microsoft focused on transforming healthcare through AI and the cloud. Furthermore, the company announced the availability of the Microsoft Genomics service on Azure last year.

Meanwhile, Azure provides researchers, data scientists, and clinicians cloud-powered genomic processing services to handle huge data workloads.

Microsoft also launched last year the Azure Security and Compliance Blueprint: HIPAA/HITRUST – Health Data & AI provides a secure and automated environment to build applications that manage sensitive and regulated data.

Novartis-Microsoft alliance to reimagine medicine

Finally, the deal will likely bolster the development of new medicines.

“Pairing our deep knowledge of human biology and medicine with Microsoft’s leading expertise in AI could transform the way we discover and develop medicines for the world,” said Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis.