How AI Is Accelerating Drug Repurposing & Therapeutic Innovation in India

With India facing increasing disease burdens and deficiencies in healthcare infrastructure, AI is becoming a driving force for quicker, more intelligent therapeutic advancements. Indian startups and institutions are making significant contributions through drug repurposing, enhancing diagnostics, genomics, and clinical research.

- Dhaval Vasavada, Associate Director Information, Data and Technology (IDT), Healthark, India

India's healthcare system is at a pivotal moment. The numbers tell a stark story - noncommunicable diseases now cause 66 per cent of all deaths while a staggering 2.4 million hospital bed shortfall intensifies the pressure on limited infrastructure. Add to that a highly cost-sensitive market where over 50 per cent of healthcare expenses are paid out-of-pocket, and the urgency for faster, more efficient treatment pathways becomes clear. One promising solution gaining momentum is drug repurposing - the game changing strategy of finding new therapeutic uses for existing drugs. This is accelerated by the growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that can cut early-stage development costs by up to 50 per cent.

AI plays a crucial role in unlocking the full potential of drug repurposing by analysing vast and complex datasets such as clinical records, biomedical literature, molecular pathways, and real-world evidence to uncover hidden drug-disease relationships. Unlike traditional methods, AI enables faster hypothesis generation, predictive modeling, and risk profiling at scale. In India, where time and cost constraints are particularly acute, this ability to accelerate discovery and reduce trial-and-error makes AI not just a helpful tool, but a transformative enabler across drug development and other therapeutic areas like oncology, rare diseases, and infectious conditions.

AI in Drug Repurposing: Use Cases from India

AI-powered drug repurposing is rewriting the rulebook, cutting development time and costs by 50-60 per cent compared to building drugs from scratch. Across India, pioneering platforms are harnessing machine learning, natural language processing, and molecular modeling to breathe new life into existing compounds

Game changing AI workflows in action