How AI Could Make Every Disease A Rare Disease

Treating over 10,000 different rare conditions requires a radically new approach to drug discovery: artificial intelligence. There has been an encouraging trend in our understanding of rare diseases in recent years. The number of recognized rare diseases where the number of those affected is one in 2,000 people or fewer—has been steadily increasing. For the last decade, the number stood between 7,000 and 8,000, but thanks to new research, including RareX's Power of Being Counted report, the number now stands at 10,867. This does not mean more and more conditions are suddenly developing, to be clear; rather, our ability to understand and distinguish between them, or diagnose them, has improved. But this presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the biotech and pharma sectors.