In the latest plot twist in the tech-meets-healthcare saga, OpenAI has reportedly been in talks with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about using artificial intelligence to speed up the drug evaluation process. According to a scoop from Wired, the two are exploring a potential project called cderGPT (yes, another GPT—but this one’s got Big Pharma vibes). The goal? Make the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) a whole lot faster and more efficient when reviewing over-the-counter and prescription medications.
Here’s why this matters: Drug development is painfully slow. Like, “a-decade-if-you are-lucky” slow. By the time a new medication hits your local pharmacy shelf, it’s gone through years of red tape, clinical trials, and mountains of paperwork. But what if AI could step in—not to cut corners, but to cut wait times?
That’s what OpenAI and the FDA are apparently trying to figure out. With tools like cderGPT, the agency could streamline part of the approval process, especially the document-heavy, research-intensive stages where human analysts often get buried under thousands of pages of trial data.
But let’s not pop the champagne just yet.
While AI has major potential to make drug evaluations faster and more accessible, it comes with a ton of questions. Like, how do you prevent hallucinations from a model that’s reading clinical trial data? Who’s accountable if something slips through the cracks? And how do you keep things transparent and ethical when AI steps into a space that deals directly with public health?
It’s still early days, but if cderGPT gets off the ground, it could be a glimpse into a future where AI isn’t just recommending your next Netflix show—it’s helping get life-saving treatments to market faster.
And yep, that’s a future we should all be paying attention to.
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