Any reason is good to visit Dubrovnik, right?

From Coral Beach to keynotes: a behind-the-scenes look at pharma’s future

In my case, I was fortunate enough to have a legitimate opportunity: the NEXT Pharma Summit 2025, one of the most interesting events exploring key trends and the future of the pharmaceutical industry.

Firstly, a shoutout and kudos to the organisers for the smooth logistics, cool venue, and, of course, a great evening at the Coral Beach Bar. It’s especially impressive since it’s only the 5th edition of the conference, and since 2019, it has grown from 100 to over 400 participants.

The dual lens of AI: Novartis vision and Teva’s playbook

The best session of the two days was held by Marco Andre, Executive Director – Global Marketing & AI Excellence at Novartis, and I don’t see how anyone could argue with that. „7 Cardinal Sins of AI” was an absolute masterclass of a presentation on the duality of AI. There are two sides to each „sin” of AI, and AI literacy is the answer to managing that. Inspiring insights and great storytelling – Marco is a renowned keynote speaker, and it shows.

At such events, I always look for practical frameworks, such as the one that Timo Buck, Head of Applied Data Science & AI at Teva, provided. Timo shared a simple 5-step approach to building AI use cases. He rightfully highlighted the importance of data strategy and data governance for achieving robust AI implementations. Practical tip: tag manual steps and decision points while mapping business processes to identify potential optimizations, whether it’s AI or any other tool.

Why every pharma transformation must start (and end) with people

I strongly believe that people are at the centre of any transformation. This message was very powerful in Carlos Eid’s, Executive Director of International Medical Affairs at Novartis, presentation, „Are we lost in the transformation?” Not often enough do we have the courage to admit that transformations are a toll on the talent, due to constant restructuring and growing pressure to do more with less. Carlos’s claim „Transformations are sh#t… without people” may seem bold, but for me it reflects the (hidden) emotions and feeling of being overwhelmed for numerous professionals in pharma.

AI was, obviously, the prevalent theme of the conference; however, one of my general observations after the event was that some of the presentations and discussion panels lacked a deeper dive and more tangible examples.

In the end, HCPs and patients don’t care about cross-functional organisation, omnichannel approach, etc. – they care about outcomes and value delivered to them. And we must remember that it’s the same for business stakeholders in BitPeak’s projects – it’s not about a data lake(house) or a new shiny dashboard, but the experience and solution that, in the end, must address real challenges.