How are life sciences engineering leaders balancing speed, agility, and compliance, in an age of disruption?
Life Sciences Engineering and R&D Pulse Report 2026
To understand the forces shaping the Life Sciences Engineering strategic agenda; benchmark where organizations stand in engineering transformation; and solutions, models, and technologies that leading organizations are deploying to stay competitive.
The urgency of life sciences transformation is real
How are life sciences leaders responding
to these challenges?
Barriers to delivering transformational change
Recommendations & conclusion
This report presents the key insights from the Life Sciences Engineering Pulse 2026, part of our broader cross‑sector Engineering & R&D Pulse.
It is based on a global survey of 200 senior life sciences leaders from large organizations across pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices, and digital health.
Respondents are senior decision-makers responsible for engineering across the entire product lifecycle – from early R&D and design to regulatory and quality compliance, industrialization, supply chain operations, and commercialization.
The quotes and case studies included are illustrative in nature, may be drawn from publicly available sources, and do not necessarily reflect the views or statements of survey respondents.
The data in the report was gathered by the Capgemini Research Institute in August 2025 via a survey of executives at organizations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. This data is from a subset of 200 Life Sciences C-level and Senior Leadership across North America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East.
Subsector breakdown:
Pharmaceuticals
MedTech
Biotechnology
Lab automation and research tools
Digital health and Software-as-a-Medical Device (SaMD)
A practical lens on the forces driving change – and the solutions leading organizations are adopting.
Few industries share the life sciences' weight of responsibility.Every drug approved, every device deployed, every therapy developed has a direct bearing on human health and quality of life. Yet the organizations entrusted with that responsibility are operating in one of the most complex environments in recent memory – one defined by geopolitical volatility, intensifying global competition, accelerating technological disruption, structural cost and time pressures, and an unprecedented pace of technological change driven by AI. The question this report asks is a simple but urgent one: are life sciences organizations prepared to meet this moment? Based on the evidence gathered from senior executives across the sector, the answer is that while ambition is high, the gap between strategic intent and operational readiness remains significant – and the window to close it is narrowing.
Our aim was threefold: to understand the forces shaping the industry’s strategic agenda; to benchmark where organizations currently stand in their engineering transformation journeys; and to identify the solutions, models, and technologies that leading organizations are deploying to stay competitive. In doing so, we sought not only to surface individual challenges, but to provide a collective view – one that allows leaders to benchmark their progress, learn from peers, and find shared solutions to shared problems.
Nirlipta Panda Vice President and Global Head of Industry Life Sciences | Capgemini Engineering nirlipta.panda@capgemini.com
Organizations are aligned on vision – but not yet prepared to deliver at scale.
The findings of this report deliver a clear message: the convergence of geopolitical volatility, accelerating AI adoption, deepening talent shortages, and sustained cost and timeline pressures is fundamentally reshaping life sciences engineering.
These forces are creating an important gap between strategic ambition and execution readiness—one that the industry can no longer afford to ignore.”
What we found was a sector that is simultaneously brimming with opportunity and burdened by challenges that threaten competitiveness, resilience, and innovation.
