VIEWPOINT Building AI agents for drug manufacturing VIKAS HEGDE AND SATISH JHA: ZS ZS’s Vikas Hegde and Satish Jha explain how pharma businesses can use AI agents to enhance drug safety testing by automating batch reviews and supporting more consistent decision-making Early AI adoption tinkered at the edges, resulting in faster task completion within the same workflows. While this may have seemed like transformation, it wasn’t. Now, AI agents are shifting the ground. These systems don’t just assist, they act. The question is no longer ‘where can I apply AI?’. It’s ‘what does this function become when AI is the decision-maker, and not just the assistant?’ At ZS, we’re using Azure AI to test this new type of question in supply chain and manufacturing. The goal is to help pharmaceutical companies get medicines to patients more quickly and with higher quality. We’ve developed agents for the two key ways companies monitor product safety and quality as part of the manufacturing process. The first is in near real-time monitoring of manufacturing performance across critical key performance indicators such as yield, defects and deviations. This step helps teams to spot and resolve issues as they happen. The second is in batch disposition activities to confirm that final manufacturing results and supporting documentation meet compliance standards and fall within allowable limits. These steps are intended to help ensure every dose is safe, effective and meets strict quality standards. To further streamline these safety steps, we’ve developed a coordinated system of AI agents. A planning agent oversees the processes handled by four specialised agents, ensuring each one stays focused on its core task. 164 Photo: iStock/gorodenkoff
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