AI will boost drug development in 2025

By Shailesh Chitnis, Global business correspondent, The Economist

Progress in computing has long been described by Moore’s law, a rule of thumb which says that the cost of processing power falls by half roughly every two years. The pharmaceutical industry follows an opposite rule. Its version, called Eroom’s law (“Moore” spelled backwards), posits that the cost of developing a new drug doubles roughly every nine years. In the 1960s $1bn (at 2008 prices) spent in research and development (R&D) yielded about ten new drugs. Today the same $1bn isn’t enough to produce even one.