A brand new survey of 500 UK professors, analysts and company researchers has discovered that AI-assisted analysis saves the typical respondent an estimated 4 hours per week—equal to over 5 further working weeks per yr per researcher.
The survey, commissioned by AI scientific frontier analysis platform Corpora.ai, discovered that when the saving was utilized to mental property checks alone, this interprets into a possible nationwide productiveness dividend operating into the thousands and thousands of hours.
Entry deeper business intelligence
Expertise unmatched readability with a single platform that mixes distinctive information, AI, and human experience.
UK researchers and R&D groups might collectively reclaim an estimated 600 million working hours per yr, presumably producing between £11-20bn of financial worth through the use of AI-powered instruments to speed up prior-art and freedom-to-operate (FTO) searches.
Analysis hours saved had been calculated by taking the typical quantity of hours per week saved utilizing AI and making use of that to the Division for Science, Innovation and Expertise determine of two.8 million folks in UK R&D occupations.
The saving of between £11-20bn of financial worth was calculated by taking the typical pay price of £21.28 per hour and multiplying that by the quantity of hours saved in a yr.
The findings come throughout the UK’s 2025 Autumn Funds week, mentioned to be one of many nation’s most extremely anticipated and chaotic, amid hypothesis of tax rises to cowl the nation’s fiscal shortfall and lagging development.
At a time when the UK desperately wants to enhance financial development, AI pushed analysis instruments might free sources for innovation, deeper evaluation and educating, based on Mel Morris CBE, Corpora.ai co-founder and CEO.
“Prior artwork patent searches [patent already publicly known] are some of the time-intensive and dear phases within the innovation course of. Our information exhibits that AI can launch thousands and thousands of hours that may very well be reinvested in discovery and commercialisation. This isn’t nearly effectivity; it’s about accelerating the UK’s capability to show concepts into mental property and financial development,” mentioned Morris.
A productiveness increase with nationwide implications
The common innovation-to-commercialisation cycle is 7-12 years, based on McKinsey, with over 80% of initiatives failing earlier than market entry, usually leading to a complete write-off. Prior-art and FTO checks are a vital however time-intensive precursor to delivering innovation throughout sectors as numerous as life sciences, supplies engineering, power and aerospace.
These searches can take weeks of guide overview throughout international patent databases and tutorial literature. The method is sluggish, costly and sometimes described as a “hidden IP tax” on innovation.
Keith Cook dinner, CEO of UCR Group mentioned: “Probably the most thrilling breakthroughs usually stall not due to a scarcity of concepts, however due to the time and value of proving these concepts are genuinely new. Prior artwork and freedom-to-operate checks are very important, however they’ll devour weeks of effort for each promising line of analysis.
“By slicing that course of right down to days and even hours, AI provides scientists and R&D groups the liberty to maneuver sooner, take extra dangers, and convey improvements to market sooner. The implications are huge – from bioscience to wash tech, the UK’s capability to commercialise discovery is immediately linked to how effectively we will navigate the mental property panorama.”
The survey discovered that 96% of UK researchers surveyed imagine AI may very well be vital in lowering this burden, highlighting broad recognition that smarter automation can speed up the journey from concept to mental property. If realised at scale, this effectivity achieve might assist shut the UK’s innovation-productivity hole and assist progress in the direction of the federal government’s ambition to lift R&D spending to 2.4% of GDP.
Regardless of the clear effectivity beneficial properties, belief stays the ultimate barrier to widespread adoption. The survey discovered that almost all of researchers confirm their outputs when reviewing literature (84%), performing prior artwork searches or affected person checks (83%) and information evaluation (93%). What’s extra, half (50%) cite accuracy as a serious concern. For a lot of, transparency of sources is non-negotiable: 94% mentioned clear citations are vital for skilled analysis workflows.
Join our day by day information round-up!
Give your enterprise an edge with our main business insights.
