Life Sciences Industry Accounting Guide (March 2025)

March 2025

The life sciences ecosystem encompasses a wide array of entities that discover, develop, and manufacture health care products. Such entities include pharmaceutical manufacturers; biotechnology companies; medical device, diagnostic, and equipment manufacturers; and service companies such as drug distributors, contract research organizations (CROs), contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs), and health technology companies.

Finance and accounting professionals in the industry face complex issues and must exercise significant judgment in applying existing rules to matters such as research and development (R&D) costs, acquisitions and divestitures, consolidation, contingencies, revenue recognition, income taxes, financial instruments, and financial statement presentation and disclosure. The 2025 edition of Deloitte’s Life Sciences Industry Accounting Guide (the “Guide”) addresses these and other relevant topics affecting the industry this year. It includes interpretive guidance, illustrative examples, recent standard-setting and rulemaking developments (through March 7, 2025), and key differences between U.S. GAAP and IFRS® Accounting Standards. Among the topics added this year are enabling technology, E.U. Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requirements, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, ASU 2023-07 on segment reporting, and ASU 2024-03 on disaggregation of income statement expenses (DISE).