The International AusBiotech conference kicked off this week, starting Monday at Brisbane’s Translational research institute.

ARM Hub’s role included hosting an AI satellite event on Tuesday, a booth on the conference floor to support follow up enquiries, and chairing panel discussions on Thursday with host Samuel Jesuadian on AI for Bioprocessing and ARM Hub CEO Cori Stewart on Medical manufacturing. 

Tuesday’s AI strategy workshop was designed especially for medical and Biomanufacturing Leaders, with all available seats for the workshop booked out well ahead of schedule.

The workshop focused on practical, proven examples of AI rollout, to help ensure attendees could come away with actionable next steps for their respective organisations.

Attendees were encouraged to build their own use cases, and then choose a space to prioritise for AI readiness.

“The next major breakthrough in life sciences may not come from a single technology, but from connecting technologies that have traditionally operated in silos,” said Sam Jesuadian, ARM Hub Chief Commercial Officer.

“AI is no longer just a tool supporting drug discovery,” he said. “It is becoming an integral part of how we discover, design and validate new therapeutics and medical innovation and scalable manufacturing processes.”

ARM Hub’s AI team drew on work with more than 200 companies to show why AI projects stall and how to fix them, including a sepsis diagnostics company that moved its trial data out of emails and spreadsheets; a medtech maker who cut custom design time from two to three days down to 10 minutes; and a safety compliance tool built for an industry association turned a four-hour job into a 15-minute one.

Three key learnings from the day:

1. Fix the data first. Capture data at the source, bring it into one place, then clean, label and secure it. This groundwork will be about 90% of the early effort.

2. Pick one use case. Score each problem on value, feasibility and risk: what the problem costs, whether you can share sample data within weeks, and what happens if AI gets it wrong. Then prepare only the data which that use case needs.

3. Start with low-risk AI. Use it to find, summarise and draft, without changing records or making final decisions. Keep a person in the loop for anything AI prepares to act on.

The AusBiotech International Conference ran from 21 to 23 October at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre, as part of Australia’s Biggest Week in Biotech.

To find out more about ARM Hub’s AI readiness assessments and workshops, visit armhub.com.au/industry-programs or contact Sam Jesuadian on samuel.jesuadian@armhub.com.au