"Key Takeaways from the 2024 ISPE Europe Annual Meeting & Expo"

The ISPE Annual Conference is really a generously organized event, not in terms of the pomp of the environment, but as a truly rational platform for the personal meeting of pharmaceutical industry professionals, both drug manufacturers and suppliers - mutual synergy is quite obvious and necessary. It was felt throughout the conference. that the individual participants did not come to be patted on the back while sipping free coffee, but to look for new opportunities, contacts and cooperation, or to maintain and build on existing ones. Personal contact, despite all advances in technology, is irreplaceable. It is probably also the main reason why the Americans also participate in the European conference, even though they have their own ISPE conferences.

The main topics of the conference were:

1. Digitization, AI and Pharma 4.0
   

2. Biological drugs
   

3. EU GMP Annex 1

The leitmotif of the conference was undoubtedly Quality Risk Management.

ISPE conferences are also regularly attended by representatives of state authorities (USA, Europe, Australia). The state authorities gave a clear signal of support for digitization, which is perceived as a benefit for the patient in terms of the safety and quality of medicines.

For me personally, it was very beneficial to hear the visions of the leaders of the pharmaceutical industry, where the industry is headed or will be headed. Warning voices have been heard from the European camp calling for modernization/digitalization, saying that otherwise Europe will just be an entertainment museum for the rest of the world.

However, the digitization process is absolutely overwhelming. Any company that no longer takes digitization seriously will succumb to competition sooner or later.

On the other hand, there is no need to succumb to the skepticism that half of the company will have to involuntarily retrain as IT specialists - among the exhibitors were a number of companies offering very intuitive IT solutions (applications enabling the digitization of existing "paper" processes. Their goal is simple - to replace routine, boring human work with computing power Applications are developed and designed for pharmaceutical processes, there is no need to program anything complicated and expensive.

On behalf of the CZ/SK ISPE Affiliate, we would very much like to follow up on last year's very successful workshop on automation and computer systems and also take inspiration from the annual ISPE conference. In autumn 2024, we plan to organize a workshop on the topic of using AI for processes at pharmaceutical manufacturers.

The field of biological medicines is, I would say, "hidden behind the horizon" for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. However, the trend of developing the production of biological drugs has been absolutely dominant for several years on both sides of the Atlantic, and the Asian pharmaceutical powers are certainly not far behind. A certain inspiration for the Czech Republic and Slovakia can be Ireland, the Netherlands or Austria - rather smaller countries with a similar number of inhabitants as the Czech Republic and Slovakia - why and how are these countries attractive for investments in the field of biological medicines?