Pharma companies aren’t ‘future ready’ as pressure mounts from AI advances and IRA legislation, survey finds

Pharma is not ready for the future. Only 10% say they’re “future ready,” according to a recent survey of pharmaceutical leaders by Indegene. That’s a big decline from just two years ago when close to 60% told the commercial consulting group they felt well prepared for the future.

What’s causing all the uncertainty? Two key changes — the emergence of generative AI and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act — are disrupting pharma management peace of mind.

Gaurav Kapoor

“Leadership is pretty much insecure and saying ‘we just don’t know,’” said Gaurav Kapoor, Indegene EVP and president of global operations. “Not only around digital and technology maturity, but overall, ‘are we mature enough?’ ”

More than half (53%) of the 110 executives surveyed “strongly agree” that being ready for the future is an important business goal this year, while another 44% said they “somewhat agree.”

Even though they may feel unsure, pharma managers are working to build out data and digital technologies, including AI, machine learning and automation, ranking as the highest priority for 66%, followed by hiring talent (63%) and building a culture of data-driven decisions (63%), the survey found.

The IRA is a different issue, though, as the law is only beginning to be implemented. Even the companies named to the federal government’s first list of 10 drugs that will have to negotiate prices with Medicare are awaiting the negotiations to begin in 2026.

Even though the new law does likely mean shorter drug life cycles — and less time to monetize a product — pharma companies are tackling the problem in different ways. One way is to use technology to shorten timelines, Kapoor said. From drug discovery to commercialization, companies are trying to figure out how to shorten discovery processes and run them more quickly.

While the industry did get a test run of faster approaches during the race to develop Covid treatments and vaccines, as Kapoor noted, many companies went “back to normal” as soon as Covid receded.

“Pharma should have picked up learnings from really accelerating the pathway. They should have been able to take those changes and institutionalize them and bring out a methodology to get a drug out 40 to 80% faster. But we haven’t seen that,” he said.

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