The 2026 DCAT Global Summit, hosted by the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association, brought the bio/pharma value chain together to tackle its biggest opportunities – and its biggest risks!

Industry leaders, scientists and policy makers from across the bio/pharmaceutical value chain converged in Sitges, Barcelona, Spain, this June for the 2026 DCAT Global Summit: The Future of Bio/Pharma: Mastering the Supply Chain, Digitalisation and Global Shifts, a thought-provoking conference for companies engaged in the bio/pharmaceutical business ecosystem. Throughout the event, the conversation kept returning to one urgent, energising question: how does an industry built on complexity and risk turn today’s disruption – AI, digitalisation and a shifting global supply chain – into tomorrow’s advantage?

The answer, according to the speakers and thought leaders who took the stage, is that the bio/pharmaceutical industry is not simply bracing for change. It is actively re-architecting how it operates – from the boardroom to the factory floor – and the DCAT Global Summit offered a rare, concentrated look at how that transformation is unfolding.

Setting the stage for the Global Summit, Dr. Christine Allen, Chief Executive Officer & Co-founder of Intrepid Labs and Professor at the University of Toronto, discussed what makes digital transformation durable: tools built with domain experts, transparent trade-offs and human-in-the-loop decisions that strengthen scientific judgment rather than replace it. Her practical vision for the future of bio/pharma is a digital-by-design approach to drug development, one where experiments, decisions and supply chains are connected through a common data backbone.

Europe at a crossroads

Central to how to respond to changing market dynamics is how the bio/pharmaceutical industry as a whole will perform, both on a global basis and in Europe specifically. The United States is the largest market in the global bio/pharmaceutical industry, accounting for nearly half of the global market (approximately 48%) followed by the top European countries (Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Spain) at 14%, China (9%), Japan (4%), Brazil and Canada each at 2%, and the rest of the world the balance, according to gross ex-manufacturer market estimates from IQVIA, a business intelligence firm serving the bio/pharmaceutical industry. Combined, these 10 countries account for approximately 80% of the global market, a collective geographic distribution that is not likely to change through to 2030.

In looking at Europe, specifically, however, the region is at a crossroads. At one level, Europe is the world’s second-largest bio/pharmaceutical market, a position that is expected to hold over the next five years, and underlying fundamentals are sound with moderate growth projected for the near term in the major markets. Broader issues, however, loom large that are pressuring the European bio/pharmaceutical industry as a cost-constrained healthcare environment is contributing to widening health inequity and creating an access gap to new medicines, the driver for industry growth, and at the same time pressuring innovation. Those were major themes addressed by Graham Lewis, Vice President, Global Pharma Strategy, IQVIA, who spoke at the DCAT Summit.

With respect to manufacturing and supply, an important policy initiative in the European Union (EU) is the proposed Critical Medicines Act, which is designed to improve the availability, supply, and production of critical medicines within the EU. The impetus for the Critical Medicines Act was born during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave strategic priority to strengthen the resilience of pharmaceutical supply chains and to mitigate supply-chain vulnerabilities. Dr. Steffen Denzinger, PhD, President, Board of Directors of the European Fine Chemicals Group, a sector group of the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic), an industry association representing chemical companies across Europe, walked the Summit attendees through the latest developments on this landmark policy.

First proposed in March 2025, the Act aims to diversify the supply chain, incentivise collaborative procurement among EU member states and boost domestic EU manufacturing to reduce reliance on non-EU countries. Notably, in May, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU reached a provisional political agreement.  This was a major milestone that moves the legislation meaningfully closer to becoming law, pending formal endorsement and legal-linguistic revision.

Among the Act’s key provisions ae the following:

• Fast-tracked funding and procedures for projects designated as strategic for critical medicines or their ingredients.
• Commission-backed collaborative procurement, at member states’ request, to close availability and access gaps.
• State aid guidelines and new international partnerships to cut reliance on single, non-EU suppliers.

AI’s turning point: from promise to practice

If Europe’s policy story is about resilience, the Summit’s AI programming was about momentum. Across a full slate of sessions, one message came through clearly: the bio/pharmaceutical industry has moved past asking whether AI belongs in the value chain and is now doing the harder, more consequential work of figuring out exactly where, when and how to deploy it – from drug discovery and development, to manufacturing and to the supply chain itself.

That shift was on full display in an executive panel exploring the practical realities of applying AI to supply-chain resiliency, including which workflows are genuinely ready for AI, which still need a human in the loop and how to build the talent and data foundations that make AI-driven processes possible in the first place. The panel featured Gijs Vissers, Head of Supply & Procurement, Nordic Pharma; Jagruti Patel, Senior Director, Commercial Development, Integrated Biologics EMEA/AP, Lonza; Abhay Bhutkar, Director, Strategic Accounts, QYOBO, a market, manufacturing and supply-chain intelligence firm; and Priya Kumar, Founder & CEO, Sustainable Inc, moderated by Arul Ramadurai, Chief Commercial Officer, Axplora.

Talent and training emerged as a recurring thread. Coral Buter, Group Head of Digitally Enabled Lean Project Delivery, PM Group, a project delivery specialist, showcased how gamified SOP training is turning standard operating procedures and complex workflows into immersive, cloud-based learning experiences, replacing the low engagement and theory-practice gap of traditional training with scenario-based learning built to improve retention and build competency faster. Sigma Mostafa, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, KBI Biopharma, offered a practical playbook for any company weighing a digital transformation initiative: build the business case, weigh in-house development against outsourcing, decide between cross-training staff and hiring targeted talent, and, critically, assess real AI readiness before committing. His advice was illustrated through examples spanning data gathering, visualisation and utilisation.

AI in action across the value chain

Session after session made the same point in a different setting: AI is already delivering results in bio/pharma development and manufacturing, not just in pilot projects. These included:

AI in Internal Processes. Thomas Altmann, Principal Global Technical Consultant, Ecolab Deutchland GmbH, and Clemente Aguila, Head of Operations & Corporate Procurement, Grifols, explained how digital transformation was reshaping how bio/pharma companies operate, compete and scale globally. Real-world strategies for using automation, AI and validated digital solutions to improve efficiency, compliance and supply chain resilience were shared.

AI & Quality by Design (QbD). Michael Schorpp, Head of Digital Innovation & AI, Global Regulatory Affairs, Boehringer Ingelheim, introduced Trust by Design (TbD) – a framework built on QbD principles that establishes accountability, transparency and data governance as the foundation for AI and machine learning deployments in pharmaceutical development.

AI in Process Development & Manufacturing. Roman Lagoutte, PhD, Senior Principal Scientist, Lonza, detailed how digital tools and AI-enabled modeling are accelerating route scouting and process development for active pharmaceutical ingredients. Anil Kane, PhD, Global Head of Technical & Scientific Affairs Pharma Services, Thermo Fisher Scientific, shared how AI and machine learning are reshaping formulation development, quality management and drug product manufacturing.

AI in Translational Pharmaceutics®. Dr. Christine Allen, CEO and Co-Founder, Intrepid Labs and Andrew Lewis, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, Quotient Sciences, shared that their continued collaboration builds on earlier work and continues its aim to cut experimental burden, conserve drug substance and speed clinical decision-making as pilot projects reinforce the broader industry push toward AI-driven efficiency in drug development.

AI & Biomanufacturing. Jara Álvarez Aller, Service Delivery Manager and Healthcare Vertical Lead, HP, and Timo Liebig, PhD, Chief Innovation Officer, mAbxience, showed how predictive modeling and digital twins are being used to simulate, analyse and optimise monoclonal antibody (mAb) production.

AI & Cell-Therapy Manufacturing. Yaman Tobaje, Senior Engineer, MSAT, Made Scientific, and Rodney Rietze, President & CEO, Streamline Bio, explored how AI-driven robotics and automation are redefining cell-therapy manufacturing – tackling the cost and scale challenges that have long stood in the way of bringing these therapies to more patients.

The takeaway

Taken together, the sessions in Sitges painted a picture of an industry moving with intention. Europe is translating the lessons of a global crisis into concrete policy. Companies across the value chain are moving past AI experimentation into disciplined, governance-first deployment. In addition, the people doing that work – from the C-suite to the process development lab – left the 2026 DCAT Global Summit with sharper tools and a clearer roadmap for what comes next.

DCAT will continue to convene these conversations as the industry’s transformation accelerates, so watch for details on upcoming programming during DCAT Week 2027 and the 2027 DCAT Global Summit.