The bulk of the letter supported Pharmac’s continued program of work, particularly its efforts to demonstrate the long-term economic benefits of medicines, which Seymour believed demonstrated why the government should provide Pharmac with more funding.
However, Seymour included a recommendation for Pharmac to consider “the use of artificial intelligence to support analytics, reporting, and decision support across core functions.”
Pharmac’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) was limited to Microsoft’s CoPilot, which can draft documents and analyze data.
When you talk to heraldSeymour said Pharmac held 20 co-pilot licenses.
“They can do a lot more work analyzing, storing, and manipulating data faster with AI than they could without AI, and they can come up with recommendations,” he said.
“Obviously, this is in its early stages, but if New Zealand is to remain a leading country in the world, it is important that we adopt available technology quickly.”
He said he expected Pharmac to further use AI in “horizon scanning” to investigate what new medicines could be of benefit to New Zealand.
“Imagine taking all the challenges New Zealand has based on our health data and calculating how funding for medicines impacts overall health. You can see how the manual processes that have had to be done for so long can be done much more efficiently.”
Mr Seymour acknowledged that the use of AI was causing “anxiety” to some people, but argued this was due to a lack of understanding.
“The appearance of something unfamiliar and seemingly powerful always creates fear and anxiety.
“But this is a doubling of people’s time and talent. Humans are still at the heart of the system, and if anything, freeing up time from menial tasks actually frees up more time to engage with humans.
“This could make Pharmac a more humane organization, because while the geeky work is done by machines, the human touch is given by people.”
Maria Robertson, Pharmac’s director of corporate services, said in a statement that no patient-identifying data is used within Pharmac’s AI tools.
He said the company’s approach is to “start small and build over time.”
“We are looking at areas where AI can be put to practical use, such as how it can be used to further improve personal productivity, knowledge retrieval, analysis, prediction, and operational decision support.”
Adam Pearce is deputy political editor. NZ Herald The Press Gallery team is based at Parliament House in Wellington. He has been working for NZME since 2018. northern advocate Whangārei and herald in Auckland.
