Merck Accelerates Pharmaceutical Innovation Using AWS Generative AI and Data Analytics

Use case typeDrug discoveryUpdated Jun 13, 2026

Merck & Co., Inc. modernized its clinical data ecosystem to overcome siloed systems and accelerate drug development and manufacturing efficiency using AWS generative AI and analytics technologies. The company implemented a data platform spanning 300+ clinical trials and deployed AI models for medical coding, database workflows, and drug design using AWS HealthOmics and Anthropic Claude models on Amazon Bedrock. Merck also used generative AI text-to-SQL for natural language querying of healthcare data, improving analyst efficiency and accelerating R&D decisions. The manufacturing data analytics platform was rebuilt on AWS, leading to a 3x performance boost and 50% cost reduction. These innovations enabled a 70% reduction in clinical trial costs, 3x faster data processing, and overall operational cost savings.

Organization
Merck
Industry
Pharma
Published
April 2026

Reported outcomes

−90%

costCost savings

−70%cost−50%cost3xcost

Strategic outcomes

New product / capabilityBuilt AI-powered clinical data platformNew product / capabilityDeployed natural language data queryingSpeed & agilityAccelerated drug development cyclesBetter decisions & insightEnabled faster scientific decision making

Catalog median for cost savings deployments: −41% across 333 reported metrics. Compare benchmarks →

Primary read

Use case focus

Showing 3 of 4

  • 1Generative AI
  • 2Data Analytics
  • 3Clinical Trial Optimization
  • Merck faced challenges managing siloed and complex clinical and manufacturing data spanning multiple therapeutic areas.
  • Extracting insights was time-consuming due to SQL complexity and disparate data sources.
  • Legacy manufacturing data platforms were insufficient for increasing data demands.
  • Merck collaborated with AWS and used Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, AWS HealthOmics, and Anthropic Claude models on Amazon Bedrock to build advanced AI-powered data pipelines and generative AI solutions.
  • Implemented generative AI text-to-SQL for efficient natural language data querying with over 95% accuracy.
  • Built a comprehensive manufacturing data platform integrating data from hundreds of sources, automating drug design and clinical workflows with custom AI models.
  • Deployed AI pipelines to improve protein design via biological foundation models.
  • Achieved a 70% reduction in clinical trial costs and manual clinical work with 90% accuracy in medical coding.
  • Accelerated drug development cycles with AI-powered protein design generation.
  • Reduced manufacturing analytics platform costs by 50% and improved data processing speed 3x.
  • Enhanced healthcare data extraction and analytics workflows, enabling faster scientific decision making.
Architecture

Merck's architecture includes a comprehensive data platform integrating clinical and manufacturing data, generative AI text-to-SQL built with Anthropic Claude models on Amazon Bedrock, AWS HealthOmics for protein design AI, and automated clinical workflows.

Sources & evidence1
Groundedness: 4/5

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