Government entities supervising access to drugs in New Zealand have planned their adoption of AI assistants and tools to accelerate processes and support decision-making.
New Zealand on the safety of medicines and medical devices (MedSafe) and the pharmaceutical management agency (Pharmac) were involved in the Pilot of Microsoft Copilot of the Ministry of Health, a smart chatbot and compliant with AI.
In addition to that, Medsafe explores the use of other AI “tools” with the possibility of managing larger data sets and meeting our commercial and sensitive confidentiality requirements “.
The director of the Medsafe group, Chris James, shared more potential AI uses in the Medicine Regulation in a letter to the Associate Minister of Health, David Seymour, who recently wrote them by encouraging their adoption of AI:
- AI to rationalize the generation of evaluation reports, allowing MedSafe to provide information in the public domain more quickly;
- Ia to help with secondary effect profiles and trend assessments; And
- AI to help assessments of the important information file as part of the analysis required for decision -making on new medical applications.
Meanwhile, the president of the Board of Directors of Pharmac, Paula Bennett, told Seymour that their staff had started using AI tools to help “process complex information, analyze large volumes of data and improve the clarity and accessibility of technical content”.
“These applications already help us work more quickly and effectively and will also have a role in supporting greater transparency in our decision-making,” she told the Minister of Health associated in a separate letter. The pharmac decides drugs and pharmaceuticals to finance publicly.
“I believe that technological absorption considerably increases productivity and [I] See Al Playing a role in a more efficient pharmac and medsafe. The search for efficiency in drug evaluation processes means that patients can access the treatments they need, “said Associate Minister of Health Seymour in a press release.
The broader context
The push for a greater adoption of the Pharmac and Medsafe AI is part of the broader digital transformation of the New Zealand health system.
In Budget 2025, the New Zealand government has affected $ 7 million NZ ($ 4.1 million) for improving pharmac data and digital infrastructure.
Medsafe has also improved how he monitors the safety of drugs. For example, in 2023, he worked with the center for monitoring adverse effects to develop a New digital system for the collection and storage of unwanted reports on the reaction of drugs, replacing its 60 -year -old database.
In the meantime, in March, Medsafe approved the First register of electronic controlled drugs in the country, which should increase the efficiency of the pharmacy.
