Digital News

The collaboration will advance Novo Nordisk's AI capabilities

Under the strategic partnership, Microsoft’s computational services, Cloud, and artificial intelligence (AI) will be combined with Novo Nordisk’s drug discovery, development, and data science expertise.

AI models developed in the partnership will be used for a variety of use cases, with two initial ones already underway, and also be used to detect new targets and validate disease biomarkers. A use case focuses on automated summerisation and information assessment for obtaining new scientific insights from sources such as patents, scientific reports, literature, and discussion forums. It can also be used to develop models that forecast an individual’s atherosclerosis development risk.

Novo Nordisk Digital Science & Innovation Senior Vice-President Lars Fogh Iversen said: “We are very excited about this new partnership that allows us to work closely together with key experts from Microsoft as we look to expand our digital science and AI capabilities. Together, we are on a path to enable faster and scaled use of AI in drug discovery, ultimately leading to more breakthrough innovations, and efficiency gain, to better serve the needs of patients.”

“The collaboration with Novo Nordisk is a great opportunity for us to collectively advance the state-of-the-art of AI itself and apply it in a way that amplifies the creativity of human experts. To achieve this ambition, AI needs to learn from every type of information that subject matter experts find valuable, and that requires the type of close interaction between multiple disciplines we see in this partnership,” stated Vijay Mital, Corporate Vice President, AI Architecture and Strategy in Microsoft’s technology and research division.