Exploring the big questions steering UK pharma forward
The UK life sciences industry finds itself at a pivotal moment. With escalating geopolitical uncertainty, mounting cost pressures, and the accelerating demands of digital and data-driven science, the sector is faced with a pressing need to adapt. Against that backdrop, Pharma Integrates 2025 delivered a timely and incisive snapshot of how life sciences in the UK and globally are both challenged and positioned for opportunity.
Held at the striking riverside campus of ARC West London in Hammersmith—a future-ready laboratory and office cluster offering 250,000sq ft of connected scientific infrastructure just a stone’s throw from the Thames—the venue itself stood testament to the themes explored throughout the day. This environment of innovation, collaboration and flexible infrastructure underscored a core message: UK life sciences must focus on building ecosystems, not just individual capabilities.
With high-calibre speakers ranging from senior government and industry leaders to technology experts and pharma executives, the message that UK life sciences is at a crossroads was clear. Strong foundations exist, but ambition now needs to be matched by action, whether through greater investment, enhanced digital capability, more robust talent pipelines or improved regulatory agility.
Read on as we distil the key messages from the day and outline what the UK life science and pharma industry need to thrive.
The UK life sciences sector has world-leading science, but risks falling behind in the global race for investment, scale, and delivery. While the new Life Sciences Sector Plan introduces clearer ownership, timelines, and metrics, speakers emphasised that strategy alone cannot compensate for deep structural weaknesses. Medicines pricing, slow NHS research throughput, contracting delays, and regulatory bottlenecks continue to push companies toward more competitive markets.
“We’ve structurally undervalued medical sciences for more than a decade. Medicine pricing is just one symptom—there are deeper cultural issues that no government strategy alone can solve.”
Geopolitical shifts are amplifying the pressure. The USA, China, and the Gulf are scaling aggressively in genomics, advanced therapeutics, and integrated health systems. The UK meanwhile, risks losing its long-standing position as a destination for global clinical and manufacturing investment unless it can accelerate regulatory agility, modernise infrastructure, and unlock NHS capacity.
“Global healthcare is being reshaped at pace. Countries that used to come to the UK for advanced treatment may soon be the ones attracting our patients. We need to move quickly or we may lose that race.”
Despite these challenges, speakers were clear that the UK’s strengths remain deeply compelling. Breakthroughs in mRNA platforms, advanced manufacturing, cell and gene therapy, and immunotherapy continue to position the UK as a global discovery powerhouse. With the right focus on system-level reform, these strengths can translate into long-term economic leadership. Several panellists highlighted that the coming 12–18 months represent a window of opportunity for the UK to move with confidence and reclaim momentum.
Together, these messages formed one of the day’s central themes: the UK has the talent, science, and platforms. What it needs now is coordinated action, faster execution, and a system that matches the sector’s ambition.
A clear thread to emerge from the day’s panel sessions was that pharma’s digital transformation is shifting, from isolated efficiency projects to a fundamental rethinking of how science is done. AI, advanced analytics, automation, and now quantum computing are no longer experimental add-ons. Instead, they are becoming core enablers of discovery, development, and operational resilience.
Speakers highlighted that the UK has a unique opportunity to lead this transformation. The depth of its AI research base, combined with the strength of biomedical clusters and access to population-scale health data, positions the country at the forefront of digital-enabled R&D. But real value will only come when these tools become truly embedded in end-to-end processes: from preclinical modelling and patient stratification through to supply-chain optimisation and real-time manufacturing oversight.
“AI can give us efficiency, but quantum allows us to explore biological complexity at a scale classical computing simply cannot. When you combine parallelisation with optimisation, you start solving problems that were previously out of reach.”
A recurring theme was the critical importance of data quality and integration. AI, digital twins, predictive analytics and workflow automation are only as effective as the data ecosystems underpinning them. As supply, manufacturing and quality functions become more digitised, the ability to connect real-time data streams, eliminate silos and generate actionable insight is increasingly becoming a core source of competitive advantage.
Cybersecurity also emerged as a non-negotiable foundation for digital ambition. With ransomware now commoditised, and attackers shifting from technical exploits to credential theft and social engineering, the UK’s expanding digital footprint brings greater operational risk. Panellists noted that regulatory expectations are rising in parallel, with a sharper focus on organisational resilience, and on the ability to maintain continuity when incidents occur.
“Cybersecurity is a board-level responsibility — that’s the expectation from Government. This isn’t an IT issue. If anyone still thinks it is, they’re missing the point entirely.”
Pharma supply chains and manufacturing models are under unprecedented strain. Geopolitics, tariff volatility, rising input costs and heightened quality expectations are forcing organisations to rethink how and where they operate. Long, linear global supply chains — once optimised primarily for cost — are being reassessed through the lens of resilience, flexibility and strategic independence.
Speakers stressed that resilience now depends far more on trusted, long-term partnerships than transactional vendor relationships. In an environment where tariff changes can reshape unit economics overnight, CDMOs and suppliers who proactively collaborate, share information early and align on risk planning are becoming increasingly valuable. Several panellists highlighted that reshoring or near-shoring alone will not solve underlying fragilities unless supported by transparent operational relationships.
“We need honest, open conversations with partners. If we don’t understand their pressures, and they don’t understand ours, we can’t build the trust needed to navigate the shocks we’re all seeing.”
At the same time, manufacturing is undergoing a structural shift. Advanced therapies, personalised modalities and increasingly complex biologics are exposing the limits of legacy batch-based infrastructure. Digital twins, IoT-enabled equipment and real-time process analytics are beginning to reshape how facilities are designed and run, reducing downtime, enabling predictive maintenance and driving more consistent product quality. But panellists cautioned that technological ambition must be accompanied by thoughtful integration — both culturally and operationally.
“Pharma still runs many plants the way it did decades ago. Digital twins and modern automation can transform performance, but only if we integrate them properly and bring people with us.”
The combined message was clear: the future of pharma supply and manufacturing will be defined by collaboration, transparency and technology-enabled resilience. Success will come from ecosystems that share risk, integrate data, modernise infrastructure and rethink the boundaries of operational partnership.
The UK’s clinical development engine is under record pressure. Trial complexity continues to rise, recruitment windows are tightening, and every additional protocol amendment introduces delay and cost. Speakers emphasised that the industry is searching for wholesale improvements, from smarter trial design to faster site activation and more dynamic use of data.
A central thread throughout the day’s discussions was the need to tackle the fundamentals first. Recruitment remains the single largest bottleneck across the life sciences sector, with the UK continuing to lag behind European comparators. The underlying inefficiency is stark, with 15–20% of trials never recruiting a single patient, and 80% delayed due to recruitment and dropout issues. Digital tools are beginning to address this by integrating EHRs, registries, and site-level data, enabling more accurate pre-screening and faster enrolment.
“More than 50% of patients referred from sites don’t meet the pre-screening criteria. Using AI, we’ve increased that significantly so the enrolment process is much more streamlined.”
Yet, technology alone cannot compensate for operational barriers. Panellists highlighted how UK contracting timelines, which often exceed 250 days, erode competitiveness and push sponsors toward faster, lower-cost countries such as Spain and Italy. Speakers argued that simplicity, not sophistication, is often the decisive factor:
“If you want your trial to be a success, it has to be as simple as you can possibly make it. Clinicians are juggling multiple studies, huge admin loads and limited support — so complexity kills recruitment. Make it easy, or they’ll enrol into someone else’s trial instead.”
Despite these challenges, the UK retains a genuine competitive edge — particularly its ability to run high-quality trials at scale when the fundamentals are well aligned. Several noted that the UK’s integrated health data, concentrated research networks and strong academic–industry collaboration give it advantages many countries lack. But these strengths only translate into outcomes when trials are designed and operationalised in ways that sites can realistically deliver.
“The opportunity we have in the UK with NHS records is phenomenal. Other countries have nothing as comprehensive or as long-term. Used well, this data can support better trial design and faster, more confident decision-making.”
Regulatory timelines and contracting were also cited as a drag on UK competitiveness. Despite model contracts and committed NHS research teams, administrative bottlenecks slow site activation and push sponsors elsewhere. Panellists stressed these barriers are fixable with clearer alignment between NHS operations and national research ambitions.
The mood around clinical trials was ultimately one of cautious optimism. The UK has the infrastructure, the patient population and the scientific capability to lead, but success depends on removing avoidable friction and empowering sites to deliver at pace.
If digital transformation, clinical innovation and resilient supply chains are the what, then the workforce is undeniably the how.
Across the event, speakers voiced how the sector’s biggest constraint is no longer technology — it’s people, and the skills, environments and culture needed to enable modern science.
Pharma’s talent landscape has become more competitive and more fragmented. Digital fluency, data literacy and cross-functional collaboration are increasingly essential, yet many organisations still rely on structures and training models designed for a different era. Several panellists described a “bilingual talent gap”, meaning a shortage of people who understand both science and digital systems well enough to bridge operational and analytical workflows.
“We’ve all said we want someone who can do everything, hit the ground running, stay in the role for years and just keep delivering. But the real challenge is equipping people with the principles and confidence to learn across disciplines — especially as AI reshapes their work.”
Retention and continuity also emerged as growing concerns. Large-scale layoffs across the sector have increased churn and put institutional memory at risk. Protecting “human intelligence” — the implicit know-how that keeps operations running — requires more deliberate knowledge-sharing and pairing people across roles and projects.
“Losing great people means losing institutional memory. You have to capture that learning — interview them, record them, document their journey. Otherwise the expertise disappears, and it’s incredibly hard to rebuild.”
Panellists also shared how new entrants to the workforce have shifting expectations from their employer. Younger scientists value purpose, flexibility, inclusion and meaningful in-person collaboration. Meeting those expectations will require thoughtful role design, clearer development pathways and environments that accommodate neurodiversity and socioeconomic diversity.
Maximising capability is no longer a hiring challenge but a strategic transformation. Organisations that invest in culture, learning, flexibility and leadership will be best positioned to attract and retain the people needed for the next decade of UK life sciences.
Across the day, Pharma Integrates 2025 revealed how the UK life sciences sector is rising to its challenges and beginning to shape a more confident path forward. The discussions pointed to a future defined by smarter use of data, more adaptive operating models and a closer integration between science, technology and the workforce.
What emerged was an encouraging picture of a sector becoming more connected: linking discovery with manufacturing, digital intelligence with clinical insight, and organisational culture with long-term capability.
The opportunity now is to build on this direction of travel with confidence. As industry, government and the NHS begin to align around shared priorities, including simplifying processes, investing in people, and scaling the areas where the UK already excels. This will help shift momentum from steady progress to meaningful acceleration. The foundations are strong, and what comes next is an opportunity to lead rather than simply keep pace.
