What happens when competitors become collaborators? The MedTech industry might have just found out.
This year’s European Veeva MedTech Summit brought together representatives from 75 MedTech companies, with areas of expertise spanning medical devices, diagnostics, biopharmaceutical manufacturing, and more.
The summit created space to turn commercial overlap into opportunity because, as the landscape evolves faster than ever before, companies across the industry are asking the same questions: What can we do to keep up with regulatory changes? How can we get innovations to patients who need them, sooner? Where should AI be implemented… and how?
Dr. Annemien Pullen, vice president of MedTech Strategy EU at Veeva Systems, highlighted this shared ambition in the opening keynote for the event: “We are here because we have something in common; we want to move the industry forward.”
Alongside Dr. Seth Goldenberg, president of Veeva MedTech, Pullen outlined the core steps to realizing that goal: connecting innovators and delivering usable, validated AI. Pullen noted that Veeva has made progress on the former and is now focusing on the latter; agentic AI for the life sciences is here.
Giving scientists time back
With pharma sharply focused on building regulatory-ready AI workflows, it’s no surprise that MedTech, sometimes perceived as the “younger brother” of pharma, is following suit.
The number of devices, diversity of products, and cross-disciplinary reach make AI implementation in MedTech compelling.
Goldenberg outlined the tools Veeva has developed to support AI adoption: “There’s two components to our Veeva AI strategy. The first is Vault AI: AI in Vault applications that helps you do the work. It’s conversational AI… just like using Gemini or ChatGPT.” Vault is Veeva’s cloud-based content, data, and AI agent management platform, which can be used across the life sciences sector. It brings data and workflows together into a single, unified source for clinical, regulatory, quality, safety, and commercial functions.
According to Goldenberg, Vault AI works with humans, like an assistant.
Teams often spend time context-switching and moving between various documents, which, according to Goldenberg, is where the tool can be helpful. It has the context, knows what the user has been working on most recently, and can pick up where they left off as soon as they start a conversation.
“The second component—and, this is very early [in development]—is Falcon agents, and this is agentic labor,” added Goldenberg. “This is doing the work for you.”
He stated that Falcon agents can conduct end-to-end workflows autonomously, with specific agents for various functions. For example, clinical agents aim to take the complexity out of trial intake; safety agents work behind the scenes to flag signals; and regulatory agents handle lengthy submission processes.
Veeva first announced Falcon agents for product development in May, with early adoption due to begin in November. Goldenberg and Pullen argued that, as a result of tools like these, humans should have more time to spend on science.
Making AI accessible for MedTech innovators
Many frontier AI models use a token-based approach. Tokens are used to quantify the units of text that AI uses to both process an input and produce an output, and customers are billed based on usage.
Tokens offer flexibility, but this approach can be difficult for consumers to navigate when they don’t know how much their AI system may cost from one day to the next. The number of tokens used doesn’t automatically correlate with the quality of the outcome, meaning one user could spend many tokens and still receive a poor result.
“We’re moving away from a token model to a fixed fee model that’s based on a user’s Vault subscription, he noted. “[Token-based approaches] are not sustainable for the world, and we want to move away from that.”
Goldenberg and Pullen were also appreciative that some companies are taking a more cautious approach to AI implementation, stating that the system is available to try, but optional to use. It is also intended to be accessible to all, from large, multinational companies to start-ups.
AI in the life sciences: “It is going to take time”
As agents “step” into the workplace this month, Goldenberg cautioned that development and deployment are still in the early stages.
He likened the tech shift to one that came before: “[AI] is similar to where cloud was 20 years ago. Even after 20 years of the cloud journey, over half of all software is still on-prem. We’re only halfway through that journey, and that’s taken us 20 years.”
“That puts the urgency about AI into context. It is going to take time.”
It was clear throughout the rest of the summit that the clock has already started ticking. As companies across the industry discussed deploying AI into workflows and undertaking digital transformations, several core themes emerged: effective AI is built on strong data foundations, a human-in-the-loop approach remains essential, and industry collaboration can help bring MedTech innovations to patients sooner.
About the speakers:
Dr. Seth Goldenberg is president of Veeva MedTech and has spent several years leading its strategic and product direction and operations. He has held senior leadership roles across MedTech, pharmaceutical consulting, healthcare communications, and regulatory strategy, with experience working for the US Food and Drug Administration. Goldenberg graduated with a PhD in structural biology and pharmacology from the University of Washington School of Medicine in 2006.
Dr. Annemien Pullen is vice president of MedTech Strategy Europe at Veeva. She has a background in medical product development and life sciences consulting, having held several senior advisory and leadership roles before progressing through Veeva’s MedTech strategy team. Pullen graduated from the University of Twente in 2010, with a PhD in medical product development.