Novo Nordisk A/S

AI is transforming healthcare by augmenting clinical decision-making, automating administrative tasks and accelerating drug discovery This week's top healthcare stories include McKinsey's use of tech and AI, GSK's new CEO and dsm-firmenich's updated focus on its health and beauty sectors McKinsey: Reshaping US Healthcare With Technology and AI McKinsey released its "What to expect in US healthcare in 2026 and beyond" report, delivering a stark assessment of the sector's trajectory. The findings suggest that technology has evolved beyond a supporting function to become the primary driver of growth across the industry. The consultancy argues that health services and technology is poised to maintain its position as the fastest expanding segment, fundamentally reshaping how care is delivered and managed. The report highlights how software platforms are increasingly embedded within the healthcare ecosystem, offering providers and payers new pathways to operational efficiency amid mounting complexity. Technological innovation, particularly generative AI and machine learning, could create opportunities for stakeholders across multiple segments through workflow automation, enhanced data connectivity and interoperability, and the generation of insights from previously siloed information. GSK's 2026 Direction Under New CEO Luke Miels Luke Miels, GSK CEO Designate (Credit: GSK) GSK has unveiled its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results, announced on 4 February, marking the first set of numbers under new CEO Luke Miels . Using these results as a launchpad, Luke is setting the tone for his leadership at the helm of the biopharma giant. While GSK delivered a strong financial performance in 2025, Luke framed the results as a foundation for what lies ahead. “GSK delivered another strong performance in 2025, driven mainly by Speciality Medicines, with double-digit sales growth in Respiratory, Immunology & Inflammation, Oncology and HIV,” he said. “Good R&D progress also continued, with five major product approvals achieved and several acquisitions and new partnerships completed to strengthen the pipeline further in oncology and RI&I.” Why dsm-firmenich is Refocusing on Health & Beauty Sectors In a move that could sharpen its strategic focus on nutrition, health and beauty , dsm-firmenich has revealed plans to sell its Animal Nutrition & Health (ANH) business to CVC, a prominent global private markets manager, for an enterprise value of approximately €2.2bn (US$2.6bn). The transaction could enable dsm-firmenich to concentrate its resources on more specialised sectors, whilst maintaining a 20% equity position in the divested ANH Companies. According to the firm, it plans to adopt a "stable to preferably rising" dividend policy, which could signal its growing commitment to delivering consistent and sustainable returns to shareholders through long-term value creation. How is Novo Nordisk Boosting Sustainability in Healthcare? Novo Nordisk aims for a 30% reduction in plastic use per patient within diabetes and obesity by 2033 compared to 2024. Credit: Novo Nordisk, The healthcare sector is responsible for around 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, intensifying pressure on pharmaceutical leaders to grow responsibly while ensuring access to care. Against this backdrop, Novo Nordisk’s 2025 Sustainability Statement within its Annual Report places its “triple bottom line” – financial, social and environmental – at the centre of long‑term value creation, not as an auxiliary initiative. “Sustainability is something Novo Nordisk remains committed to each year,” says Dorethe Nielsen, VP Environmental Responsibility at Novo Nordisk. “Despite an increasing environmental footprint in 2025 as we aim to serve more patients, we made important progress on our environmental ambitions and targets. Why NETSCOUT Prioritises Cyber Resilience in Healthcare NETSCOUT's CTO for Security Darren Anstee in conversation with Technology Magazine at MWC Barcelona 2025 A thought leadership piece by Darren Anstee, CTO for Security at NETSCOUT. Cyberattacks are a pervasive threat across every industry, but in healthcare, the consequences are measured in far more than just financial loss or reputational damage. When a healthcare provider’s digital infrastructure is compromised, the disruption to patient care is immediate, tangible and can impact patient treatments and outcomes. This unfortunate reality was starkly demonstrated by recent attacks on the NHS, whereby threat actors accessed sensitive patient data and forced major London hospitals to cancel critical operations and appointments, leaving thousands without the care they needed. Company portals CVC dsm-firmenich GSK McKinsey Netscout Novo Nordisk Saltgrass SiMLQ Executives Brian Litten Co-Founder & Managing Partner Darren Anstee CTO for Security Dimitri de Vreeze CEO Dorethe Nielsen Vice President - Corporate Environmental Strategy Luke Miels Chief Commercial Officer Michael Dreher Advisory Board Member

“If we were about to throw in the towel we would not be investing in factories in Ireland,” Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar told Bloomberg. As Novo Nordisk’s hotly anticipated Wegovy pill gets off to the races in the U.S., the company is making sure to cover its supply bases overseas, too.Novo plans to invest in an expansion of its facility in Athlone, Ireland, to produce its Wegovy pill for markets beyond the U.S., the company’s CEO, Mike Doustdar, told Bloomberg News in a newly published interview.Doustdar provided scant details on the scope of the project or the investment Novo has planned, tying the move back to Novo’s hope that the Wegovy pill will help reclaim some of the obesity market ground it has lost to U.S. rival Eli Lilly.“If we were about to throw in the towel we would not be investing in factories in Ireland,” the CEO told Bloomberg.When reached for more detail, a Novo spokesperson said the company had no further comments on its plans for the time being.Doustdar’s eye on Ireland comes shortly into the U.S. launch of the Wegovy pill, which has done stellar by almost all accounts—despite a brief compounding imbroglio with Hims & Hers last week.Approved by the FDA in late December, the Wegovy pill officially launched Jan. 5 and almost immediately began to log impressive prescribing stats. More than 170,000 people were taking the Wegovy pill some four weeks into its launch, Doustdar said during Novo’s fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings call earlier this month, and the figure now stands above 240,000 prescriptions, he told Bloomberg.The pill’s strong launch was threatened briefly last week by the announcement from online health and wellness company Hims & Hers that it had debuted its own compounded, GLP-1-containing pill for obesity just weeks into Novo’s branded rollout. Nevertheless, a patent lawsuit from Novo and a pledge from the FDA to take action against the legally nebulous trend of mass GLP-1 compounding caused Hims to back down. Novo’s Wegovy pill has yet to win a green light outside the U.S. The company submitted filings for the oral obesity drug to the European Medicines Agency and other regulators in the second half of 2025 and is currently expecting EU approval early this year.As for the Danish drugmaker’s current setup in Ireland, Novo in late 2023 said that it would purchase a pill factory from Alkermes in Athlone for about $91 million.Alongside roughly 400 employees, the plant equipped Novo with “additional development and manufacturing capacity for current and future oral products,” Novo’s then senior vice president of product supply and emerging technologies, Thilde G. Hummel Bøgebjerg, said in a statement at the time. 

The European life sciences industry got a boost on Thursday with the launch of a new venture capital (VC) ecosystem that aims to address underlying problems in the sector, namely scaling and retaining innovation. Founded by a number of life science VC firms and research institutions, in association with Invest Europe, the European Life Sciences Coalition (ELSC) aims to respond to a growing concern that the region is not currently equipped to finance and scale its life sciences innovations.According to ELSC — whose members include Forbion, Novo Holdings, Omega Funds and Sofinnova Partners — European life science VC funds currently account for just 7% of the global market, versus 63% in the US and 14% in China. The coalition noted that 66 out of 67 European biotechnology companies that went public over the past six years chose to list outside of the EU.Naveed Siddiqi, Novo's venture investments senior partner, explained that the investment company joined ELSC "to help mobilise greater sums of capital for investments from both private and public sources" into the European life sciences sector."To succeed and scale, life sciences companies need access to substantial capital and policy frameworks that recognise the realities of developing complex, science-based businesses," Siddiqi said.Structural barriers remainELSC noted that while Europe has strong scientific foundations and entrepreneurial talent, structural barriers — including the underutilisation of private savings, fragmented capital markets, and slow and uneven regulatory processes — continue to limit access to growth capital, forcing companies to seek financing elsewhere.Members of ELSC, which also includes Cooley, Covington & Burling, HealthCap, Van Lanschot Kempen and the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), together manage more than €24 billion ($28.5 billion) in life science assets and have invested in or helped found over 1400 companies. Meanwhile, Invest Europe represents more than 650 members in the finance sector across 47 countries that manage 60% of European private equity and VC, accounting for €1.25 trillion ($1.5 billion) of assets under management.ELSC said that it aims to help reverse the current trends by advocating for more effective mobilisation of start- and scale-up capital, as well as a more integrated, efficient investment environment for innovative companies. The coalition is also looking to work with policymakers.There have been a few other bright spots among the gloom that surrounds the European life sciences sector, with Italian VC firm Angelini Ventures linking up with the European Investment Bank (EIB) late last year to support a slew of early-stage companies in the health sector with investment of €150 million ($178 million). More recently, Servier launched its own corporate venture fund with an initial backing of €200 million ($238 million) earmarked for innovative biotech and technological companies.