Moderna and OpenAI Partnership for AI-Driven Drug Development

Moderna has partnered with OpenAI to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise to thousands of employees, integrating generative AI across every business function to accelerate the development of life-saving mRNA treatments. This partnership aims to increase human capacity and clinical performance, enabling Moderna to pursue its goal of bringing up to 15 new products to market within the next five years, including RSV vaccines and individualized cancer treatments.

Scaling AI Adoption Across the Organization

Moderna implemented a comprehensive change management program to achieve 100% adoption and proficiency of generative AI among employees with digital access within six months. This strategy focused on three primary pillars:

  • Individual Change: Utilizing in-depth research, listening programs, and AI-powered learning companions to teach AI.
  • Collective Change: Identifying 100 "Generative AI Champions" via a prompt contest and establishing an internal AI forum with 2,000 active weekly participants.
  • Structural Change: Engaging the CEO and executive committee to foster an AI culture through town halls, leadership meetings, and incentive programs.

Prior to the full rollout of ChatGPT Enterprise, Moderna launched "mChat," an internal chatbot built on OpenAI's API, which saw adoption by over 80% of employees and served as a foundation for the transition to the enterprise platform.

Quantifying the Impact of ChatGPT Enterprise

Following a comparative analysis between mChat, Copilot, and ChatGPT Enterprise, Moderna selected the latter due to superior user preference (Net Promoter Score). Within two months of adoption, the company observed the following metrics:

  • GPT Creation: 750 custom GPTs were developed across the company.
  • User Engagement: 40% of weekly active users created their own GPTs.
  • Usage Volume: Users averaged 120 ChatGPT Enterprise conversations per week.

Technical Application: The Dose ID GPT

Moderna developed a specialized GPT pilot called Dose ID to augment clinical trial development. Dose ID acts as a data-analysis assistant for clinical study teams by utilizing ChatGPT Enterprise's advanced data analysis features to automate the analysis of large datasets.

Key capabilities of Dose ID include:

  • Dose Verification: Applying standard dose selection criteria to verify the optimal vaccine dose selected by the clinical team.
  • Rationale Generation: Providing supportive rationale for dose selection and referencing sources to ensure transparency.
  • Visualization: Creating customized data visualizations and informative charts to illustrate key findings.

This tool is designed to augment human clinical judgment, allowing teams to evaluate large amounts of data more efficiently and safely before progressing to late-stage clinical trials.

Operational Efficiency in Legal, Compliance, and Communications

Moderna has integrated AI into non-clinical functions to reduce administrative overhead and improve communication:

  • Legal and Compliance: The legal team has achieved 100% adoption. The "Contract Companion GPT" provides readable summaries of contracts, while the "Policy Bot GPT" allows employees to to find answers regarding internal policies without searching through multiple documents.
  • Corporate Brand: The brand team uses GPTs to prepare slides for quarterly earnings calls and to translate complex biotech terminology into accessible language for investors, regulators, and doctors.

Strategic Implications for Biopharmaceutical Scaling

Moderna views AI as a mechanism to maintain a lean organizational structure while scaling innovation. CEO Stéphane Bancel stated that while traditional biopharmaceutical methods might require 100,000 people to achieve their current goals, Moderna believes it can maximize patient impact with only a few thousand employees by using AI to scale the company's capabilities.

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