Drug development and rapid innovation are unlikely bedfellows.

Drug development is, by its very nature, a long-winded, wieldy, hyper-expensive process. However, the integration of artificial intelligence, high-throughput screening techniques, and advanced computational modelling has catalysed the identification of potential drug candidates and expedited the prediction of their efficacy and safety profiles.

Are we finally entering an era where the once-distant notions of drug development and rapid innovation are becoming increasingly intertwined? And what will it take for the industry to fully harness the potential of novel tools and strategies to address unmet medical needs in a more efficient and agile manner?

In 1950, Alan Turing came up with The Imitation Game, later renamed in his honour.

The idea was simple. Imagine you have a conversation between a human A, and a computer programme B, through a text-based interface. Another human C is the judge. The judge's task is to have separate conversations with person A and programme B without seeing them, and then try to decide which one is the human and which one is the computer programme.

In this live blind Turing test panel, the audience is the judge, asked to work out who of our unsighted panellists is a human, and who is reading straight from a generative AI prompt.

Will you be able to work out who's shooting from the hip and who's words were written by a chip?

In 2021, health was in cruise control. Ticking over at 130 km/h, with an IPO every few kilometres, a clear road ahead, and not a cloud in the sky. Looking back as 2020 disappeared in our mirrors we were forging ahead, free to forget about past issues and objections.

As we soared up to junction 2022 though, a jam appeared. Just one lane at first, then rapidly filling the highway. The skies grew darker. Warning lights started to appear. Slowly at first, then with rapid, debilitating, frequency. Objections in the mirror were indeed closer than they had appeared. If you looked just at the public markets, and their reaction to healthtech over the last two years, you could be forgiven for questioning whether an IPO is (still) a legitimate route for the sector.

With a number of high-profile firms down over 95% from their IPO, many have questioned whether this is indicative of a wider trend in venture-backed healthtech. After the SPAC-attack of 2021, and the subsequent fallout, and with VCs sat on more LP cash than ever before, can healthtech companies really still dream of an IPO? Or should they be set up to explore other exit routes?

Healthcare data is a veritable feast - trillions of rows, across billions of patients, housed in millions of silos globally.

It's a little-known law, but healthtech startups are now legally required to have the phrase 'data-driven' somewhere on their website, just to be able to get a seat at the table (or the next round of investment). Data has transformed industries globally - from finance to shipping, energy to retail. Healthcare data has the power to transform our lives more than any other, but it’s still far from realising its maximum potential.

Underutilised, siloed, and mired in ethical and moral debate. To access the potential goldmine, the conversation has to finally move forward. Where will data make the most effective difference in healthcare? And how do we excavate this impenetrable goldmine?