The Life Sciences Industry Conference 2026 took place on Thursday 22 October at the Crowne Plaza, Santry, gathering the people who run Ireland’s life sciences sites around a single question: how can artificial intelligence be put to work on the manufacturing floor safely, at scale, and for real?

Under the theme The AI-Ready Manufacturing Site, Conference Chair Brendan McGrath, former Ireland Site Head and VP of Manufacturing at WuXi Biologics, opened the day before William Fahey of Pfizer delivered the keynote on the future of biopharma manufacturing in the age of AI. Professor Damien Thompson of the University of Limerick then examined how modelling and machine learning are changing pharmaceutical R&D.

The first session, Trust, Governance and Responsible AI, asked whether AI can be trusted enough to scale, with Ger McCabe presenting on the foundations of responsible adoption and a panel including Matt Moran, James Murphy of Eirgen Pharma, and Dr Araz Raoof of ARC Hub for Therapeutics. The second session turned to scaling from pilot to production, led by Trevor Marshall of Cognizant alongside Colm Bambury of Amgen and Meg Leahey of Sanofi.

After lunch, the focus moved to people. Fergal Wall of NIBRT presented findings on digital and AI maturity in biopharma manufacturing, and a panel featuring Dinny Crowe of ABM, Domhnall Carroll of Digital Manufacturing Ireland, Dr Hisham Al-Obaidi of the University of Reading, and Susan Costello of BioPharmaChem Skillnet explored workforce preparation and skills development.

The day closed with The AI-Ready Enterprise. Cormac Byrne of APC set out what leaders need to do now, before a leaders panel with Alice Redmond of CAI, Tom Quinn of Novo Nordisk, Matt Moran, and Brendan McGrath considered how AI will redefine manufacturing leadership.

The conference gave site and operations leaders across pharma, biotech, MedTech, and medical devices a working forum built around shared practical experience. By bringing together voices from manufacturing, quality, engineering, digital, and supply chain, the programme reflected a sector moving beyond AI experimentation towards the governance, skills, and leadership decisions that determine whether digital tools deliver lasting value on the plant floor.

Visit the conference website to explore the full programme and speaker line-up, and subscribe for updates on future BusinessRiver life sciences events.