Digital and Intelligent Health Forum | Yang Yang: New data ecosystem for AI drug discovery

Yang Yang, director of group office and head of group AI strategy from Hansoh Pharma, speaks at Digital and Intelligent Health Forum during the 2026 World Internet Conference Digital Silk Road Development Forum. [Photo/wicinternet.org]

Yang Yang, director of group office and head of group AI strategy from Hansoh Pharma, shared his insights on the future of AI-driven drug research at a forum based on the theme of digital health during the 2026 World Internet Conference Digital Silk Road Development Forum, which was held in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, on July 22.

He examined the current landscape of AI-enabled innovative drug research and highlighted key challenges facing the industry. 

Yang noted that innovative drug research has become a frontier for AI applications, with the pharmaceutical industry's digital and intelligent transformation reaching a critical turning point. 

Yang emphasized that high-quality data is the key to overcoming these limitations. While publicly available medical literature has become increasingly saturated, vast amounts of unstructured clinical data stored by healthcare institutions remain underutilized. 

Unlocking these fragmented datasets, he said, could enable much closer alignment between AI models and real-world clinical needs, improving both research efficiency and reliability.

He also called for building a full-industry data ecosystem supported by favorable policies, making better use of healthcare data to create "digital twins" of patients and support the more precise analysis of drug targets and patient characteristics. 

Looking ahead, Yang said competition will increasingly depend on data governance, biological validation, and cross-sector collaboration rather than algorithms alone.