ACTO's survey found that 64% of life sciences leaders said their organizations had established or were developing artificial intelligence governance, as respondents also reported uncertainty about standards and workplace use.
Among 135 respondents at pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies, 22% said their governance process was fully in place, while 42% said it was still being developed. Another 21% reported having no defined process, and 15% said they used a one-time approval gate, ACTO said.
The survey suggests respondents' comfort with AI did not remove concerns about its use at work. Sixty-nine percent reported high personal comfort with AI, but 54% said they were concerned about its use inside their organizations. Fifty-eight percent said the life sciences industry lacked clear standards for responsible AI.
Asked about obstacles to scaling AI, 21% cited regulatory, legal or compliance hesitation; 9% pointed to technical readiness. In evaluating pilots, 24% selected trust and adoption as a success measure, one percentage point ahead of efficiency at 23%, ACTO reported.
The survey ran from June 8 to July 17, 2026, and 97% of respondents held director-level roles or higher. ACTO also included eight executive roundtables held across North America and Europe from February through April 2026. The company describes itself as a provider of AI tools for life sciences field teams.
ACTO said 23% of organizations did not monitor or discuss employees' use of unauthorized AI agents. Its description of governance includes ongoing oversight, named business owners and escalation paths, along with decisions about whether an AI agent can be deployed or revoked.
ACTO co-founder and CEO Parth Khanna said leaders had “no shared bar to answer that” when deciding which AI systems they could trust enough to scale. Lisa DeMarco, general counsel and chief business officer at Arctic Therapeutics, said the roundtables highlighted “the need for practical guidance to help organizations assess AI trustworthiness.”
ACTO proposed a RAIL Score to assess AI systems across governance, security, testing and certification, human centricity, value creation and orchestration. The company's report summarizes survey respondents' views; it is not an independently verified measure of AI adoption across the life sciences sector.
