Pharmaceutical Market Europe • June 2025 • 28-30
HCP ENGAGEMENT AND AI
By Danny Buckland
Science fiction has emerged from the margins of credulity to play a central role in everyday life. Make-believe machines that framed big movie dramas have now leapt off the screenplay pages to become commonplace.
Robots and algorithms that challenge humanity are now a Hollywood staple, but scriptwriters could impart a lesson or two that could inform healthcare’s relationship with technology – the human condition is still the hero and emotions always triumph over encryptions and exabytes.
It is a mantra that could serve industry well as it becomes more enthralled with the onslaught of machine learning, social media targeting, AI-driven research, smart algorithms and advanced graphics across multiple channels in the drive to connect with healthcare professionals (HCPs).
The accelerants of hyper-coded software and lightning-fast microprocessors offer bewildering engagement potential, but their ability to understand and respond to the human condition remains an inflexion point that scriptwriters would recognise and exploit.
The floodgates have already opened and SciLife research forecasts that AI applications could generate between $350bn and $410bn in annual value for pharmaceutical companies by 2025.¹
It’s a seemingly irresistible prospect and AI’s influence is growing across drug discovery, clinical trials and supply chains. While it is a compound factor of marketing campaigns, there is a growing call for a pause to allow the human condition to come up for air.
‘The sweet spot of engagement is to be found in a mix of human and digital influences’
“It sounds obvious, but it is worth stressing that human intuition is important in everything we do,” says Ffyona Dawber, CEO and Founder of Synergy Vision, the full-service medical communications agency that majors in commercial and HCP engagement. “And it is particularly important when we are engaging with HCPs.
“AI is brilliant in many respects, such as data mining, referencing and statistics,, but what it doesn’t give you is debate, that peer-to-peer discussion and sharing of opinions that HCPs both want and need. We all think we’ve got our own opinions on matters, but all of our opinions are formed by talking to and understanding like-minded people.”
In-person conferences, congresses and seminars have made a strong comeback since COVID-19, but the leap to online connections forged during the pandemic will not be reversed. The sweet spot of engagement is to be found in a mix of human and digital influences that has enough malleability to form and shift around the high-pressure, time-pressed lives of HCPs.
“There has been a bounce-back in face-to-face opportunities, but you do need to vary your media across care settings. There are big differences between primary and secondary, and specialties – where some are more switched on to digital advances, whereas others are more traditional,” adds Ffyona, who held key roles in clinical pharmacology, product launch and post-marketing research at GSK before founding Synergy Vision. “The key to success is to identify your audience and then how they want to be communicated with, but you also have to be flexible to start with and to assess and readjust, if necessary, throughout each campaign.”
This is a hot area for development in pharma – a furnace where AI and digital components can be crafted into effective tools shaped to the needs of a particular user or project.
Ffyona advocates deploying digital to create conference atmospherics in a virtual world so the interaction with research and data has a collegiate, personal and more compelling impact.
“We can establish online forums where HCPs talk to each other and bounce ideas off each other or react to a new piece of data like they might at a conference,” she says. “We can build forums that act like a virtual steering committee or advisory board that doesn’t have to be attended at a set hour; it can be flexible with their work commitments. Then when HCPs on the other side of the world wake up, they can read and engage with the topic.
“It allows for that two-way exchange of information and opinion, and for people to float questions such as: ‘I’m a bit worried about these side effects, has anyone else seen this or have any views?’ and then have discussions with your peers. They want the debate and balance of views you get from talking to peers, and with interactive tools you can recreate what they miss out on by not attending conferences or meetings. It is easy to deliver data and facts, but it is not everything we want to know as humans.”
This is not just a cerebral silver lining; it delivers value to therapies and enhances their reach to the right patients and their ability to transform health outcomes. “We are developing ways of engaging with people at different times and points using AI, but we need the human input,” adds Ffyona.
‘The key to success is to identify your audience and be flexible – assess and readjust, if necessary, throughout each campaign’
“HCPs will feel better able to prescribe when they discuss and unpick things with their peers. They’ll get a feeling about patients, but won’t be able to put their finger on it until they have those conversations. AI on its own, at least at the moment, cannot do that, but combining the two can drive a wealth of insights.”
Synergy Vision factors the human-digital potential into early client discussions, with emphasis on clearly identifying the audience and what data and research is available.
“In essence, it is not hugely complicated,” says Ffyona. “It is a step-by-step approach of setting out what the client wants and what their KPIs and measurables are. It should be straightforward, but you would be surprised how sometimes people get a bit carried away with AI and wanting different apps.”
Social media has opened up new ways of communicating and understanding behaviour and a key trend, Ffyona observes, is that younger physicians are engaging with colleagues representing their demographic and career stage, and will respond to them, creating a digital influence base away from the traditional strongholds of KOLs and eminent figures addressing set-piece congresses.
“You have to be responsive and agile, which means templates are out, but there are more tools to help with this, so HCP engagement is a hugely exciting landscape,” comments Ffyona.
But pharma clearly has to be agile and digitally dynamic to navigate significant access challenges. According to Veeva Systems, just over half (53%) of HCPs in Europe are accessible to biopharma companies, and 62% of those limit their interactions to just three or fewer organisations. Globally, HCP access has dropped to 45%, down from 60% just 18 months ago. The positive takeaway from the Veeva Pulse data is that accessible HCPs are open to a mix of in-person and digital interactions.²
“HCPs are busy people, so capturing their attention requires content that is both timely and relevant. The good news is that there is a lot of rich data that reveals what content doctors are engaging with – from the research they are conducting to the papers they are reading. These insights make it possible to develop content that truly resonates,” says Florian Schnappauf, Vice President of Enterprise Commercial Strategy, Europe at Veeva Systems.
“It is critical that commercial teams understand their HCP audience. Without it, they won’t earn the right to any of their limited time. HCPs will lose interest very quickly if they do not receive relevant information through their preferred channels.
“Biopharmas are investing more in understanding their customers – they know it doesn’t come by chance. Unfortunately, many companies have spent years essentially guessing what their customers want to hear and how they prefer to engage. This approach has led to low access rates and a lot of disengagement.
“The key is tailoring content to the HCP and the channel. You wouldn’t paste a 200-page PDF into a chat channel, so share the right level of information to spark a follow-up meeting and build the conversation over time. When you build on previous interactions, you see real results, but you have to get it right from the start.”
Veeva Systems, a leader in cloud-based software for the global life sciences industry, believes its proprietary data and software drive productive engagements that accelerate the speed and efficiency at which patients receive medicines. “That is our mission,” adds Florian. “Our software applications, combined with deep data on HCP preferences, help pharma companies tailor engagement to individual HCPs, delivering the right content to the right doctor at the right time.
“When used strategically, digital channels don’t replace in-person interactions – they enhance them. The result is higher HCP engagement and a stronger, more seamless customer experience. Expectations are shifting towards consumer-grade digital experiences, and that trend will only accelerate over the next five to ten years as a new generation of digitally native HCPs enters the workforce. We know that 42% of accessible HCPs are open to a mix of in-person and digital interactions, and if a compliant chat channel is available, 30% of HCPs will initiate conversations.”
Florian is an advocate of AI’s potential to define and streamline routes to HCPs that enable bidirectional relationships to develop.
Pharma has invested heavily in researching and building systems that can cut through digital white noise and land with clarity on an HCP’s desk, phone or tablet, but those mechanics need to be oiled by highly relevant and actionable content.
“AI and large language models can process a lot of information quickly and deliver insights into individual HCPs, but only if you have the right data foundation in place,” observes Florian.
“This is becoming more critical as the industry shifts from primary care and mass-market therapies to specialty care, where the landscape is far more complex. Go-to-market strategies must evolve to target entire care networks, not just individual HCPs. That means engaging a broader network of stakeholders, including key opinion leaders, nurses to prescribers, and payers.
‘HCPs will lose interest very quickly if they do not receive relevant information through their preferred channels’
“The good news is that HCPs are not only required to stay informed, they are also eager to learn. That creates valuable opportunities for pharma companies, but it’s a two-way street. Once you establish that engagement, the content must be of a high quality, enabling HCPs to perform at their best and deliver optimal outcomes for patients.”
Liisa Caliendo, SVP Global Marketing and Commercial Product Development at Medscape Global, counsels that engagement needs to be sharply finessed to individual HCP levels to have the right impact.
“Before the pandemic, there was a balanced mix in the way HCPs engaged. Online was definitely a strong portion of that but, post-pandemic, it can sometimes be the only way you can reach some HCPs. There are a lot more digital opportunities to contact HCPs now, but the challenge is to make sure you are not overloading them with information,” she says. “Content has to be carefully curated in order to specifically meet their needs rather than bombarding them – we need to be here to help and not to add to the chaos.
“If you push too much, HCPs will opt out of hearing from you and it may be difficult or impossible to recover their interest in the future. When we’ve asked them specifically about pharma communications, a lot of them put emails high on their gripe list. They receive too many emails from pharma and you can imagine how overwhelming it can be if any pharma website that they’ve ever signed up to sends them multiple emails a week.
“HCPs want information that is in response to their needs and personalised to them, not always just their specialty. We are trying to get down to an individual’s needs at a point in time.”
Medscape Global, a division of WebMD, which has been providing clinical information and education resources for 30 years, has access to a professional network of more than 13 million HCPs across the range of clinical areas that drives intelligence and data that helps influence behaviour change and improve patient outcomes.
Liisa emphasises that digital capabilities and channels will continue to expand and communication noise will grow, making it even more essential to be thoughtful, strategic and personalised when targeting HCPs.
“Medical knowledge is supposed to be doubling every 73 days, so it’s nearly impossible for physicians to really stay on top of everything. We encourage our clients to have a strong point of view of what they want HCPs to learn and understand by the end of their projects, so that communications can be clear, succinct and impactful for physicians,” she adds.
“There has to be flexibility as HCP needs are constantly changing. No one’s online habits are going to be static, so we work to make sure we are adaptive and we devote a lot of time to refining and honing our Medscape One product, which is a personalised next best action engine, so that any message to a physician is triggered by a previous action and is highly relevant to their needs. We are also exploring AI triggered optimisations based on activity within the Medscape Network.
“You then reach the doctors who really need that information before they make a decision versus after. This responsive information delivery can help physicians make decisions more confidently and moves the needle for pharma companies.”
Precision targeting driven by Medscape’s reservoir of data can improve HCP engagement rates by 50% and lead to faster learning, observes Liisa, who adds: “When you get it right, physicians will keep coming back and we want them to continue to see us as the trusted source of truth that can get them the information they’re looking for right away.
“The end result is an HCP who can better prescribe and better treat patients, therefore patient outcomes are the beneficiary and it is a good feeling to be part of that. We are natural partners with pharma companies and we are both trying to improve patient care worldwide.”
Danny Buckland is a freelance journalist specialising in the healthcare industry