22-23 AI - The engagement paradox

There is a growing disconnect between what the industry is offering in terms of digital customer experience and what clinicians actually value.

While pharma invests heavily in AI technologies, many healthcare professionals (HCPs) are quietly disengaging from the digital platforms already available to them.

This is not resistance to innovation but a response to experiences that still require too much effort for too little return.

HCPs and patients are not asking for AI from pharma. They are asking for faster access to relevant, trustworthy information with less effort.

Digital engagement is well established, with recent research showing that 69% interact with pharma digitally on a weekly basis, yet 65% say they have reduced or stopped engaging with a company due to poor digital experiences.

When HCPs are not engaging, the assumption from pharma is typically that platforms need to be more personalised, more dynamic or more intelligent. From that perspective, AI becomes an obvious next step.

However, this risks solving the wrong problem.

When clinicians describe what they want from a digital platform, the responses are grounded in practical outcomes: content relevance to their speciality and patients; utility in supporting real clinical tasks; usability that reduces friction and saves time.

These are the factors that determine whether digital content earns attention or is filtered out. AI only enters the picture when it helps meet those needs more efficiently.

The lack of usefulness is what is causing HCPs to disengage, rather than the lack of platform sophistication.

In recent conversations with a pharmaceutical company exploring innovation opportunities, one pattern stood out early on. The discussion moved quickly from understanding unmet needs with a broad scope to identifying only those areas where AI could be applied.

What was striking was not the ambition but the sequencing. Insight gathering and opportunity definition were compressed, while disproportionate weight was given to AI-led solutions, regardless of their fit with the underlying problem.

This is becoming a familiar dynamic. AI has become the easiest way to signal innovation internally, but in prioritising visible innovation, there is a risk that the less visible, but arguably more important, work of improving everyday experiences for clinicians continues to be overlooked.

The consequences are already clear. 58% of HCPs find most pharma digital content repetitive or irrelevant, while 52% say communications are too promotional and not useful enough.

These factors directly influence whether digital interactions are considered worth the time, and if AI is applied without addressing this fundamental requirement, AI-enabled experiences will only propagate these issues, driving HCPs away.

When pharma digital does not deliver, clinicians adapt, seeking out alternative sources that better respect their time. Open platforms, peer networks and, increasingly, general-purpose AI tools are part of everyday practice.

This mirrors broader consumer behaviour, where AI is used to reduce effort in daily tasks, from search to content consumption. These tools are unlikely to be more accurate or more compliant, but they are easier to use.

This shift matters because it reframes competition. Pharma companies are no longer competing only with others in the industry for attention, they are competing with any tool that helps clinicians achieve their goals more efficiently.

Given that the most common uses of AI amongst HCPs are searching and summarising scientific literature and handling administrative tasks, adoption is clearly driven by utility and pragmatism.

Therefore, the opportunity for pharma lies in deploying AI to reduce the time and effort required to access and process information, rather than building complex clinical solutions.

Summarisation is a clear example. The volume of new evidence continues to grow, and keeping up is a persistent challenge, with nearly half of clinicians reporting they do not have enough time to read or engage with digital pharma content.

AI can help by surfacing key findings, highlighting relevance and allowing time-poor clinicians to decide where to focus their attention.

Search is another area where improvement is overdue. Many pharma platforms still force users to navigate rather than find. AI-enabled search, based on natural language queries, has the potential to connect intent with relevant content far more efficiently.

An extension of this would be to deploy agentic AI to support task completion, reducing the number of steps required to answer a clinical question by connecting related content and guiding clinicians through complex information.
Used well, this shifts the experience from friction to flow.

Adding AI to an already weak experience does not solve underlying problems. Improving utility or navigation means nothing if content lacks relevance or credibility.

If access barriers remain, AI becomes another layer within an inefficient system.

Considering where clinicians are currently wasting effort, and how friction could be reduced, shifts the focus from innovation to experience. Where AI has the potential to augment or enhance experiences, the fundamentals need to be in place for it to deliver.

High-quality content, structured data, clear taxonomy and consistent governance are not optional, but many pharma companies experience structural issues in these areas.
Content strategies are shaped by brand priorities rather than user needs, digital ecosystems are fragmented and governance slows iteration.

Rather than removing these constraints, AI makes them more visible. There is a significant risk that the HCP experience could deteriorate, further reducing engagement, if these issues are not addressed.

Pharma digital does not have an innovation problem. It has an effort problem, with direct commercial implications.

Platforms that reduce effort are used repeatedly, building familiarity and preference over time, while high-effort experiences push clinicians elsewhere. Once those behaviours shift, they are difficult to reverse.

AI will accelerate this dynamic. Not because it transforms the experience, but because it makes the difference between good and poor experiences more obvious.

Part of the challenge is how digital platforms are still positioned internally. Many are treated as repositories for information, structured around brand or content ownership rather than clinical use. In that model, value is limited to what is published.

When platforms are designed around the experiences of HCPs, and how they interact with both information and people, the role changes. They become environments that support tasks, decisions and conversations.

This is where value is created, not in the volume of content, but in how effectively it can be used.

Applied carefully, AI can reduce the time it takes to access information, improving clarity and engagement at the point of need and supporting clinicians in navigating increasing complexity.

But its value depends on the quality of the experience it sits within, and AI for its own sake should not be the starting point.

PharmaTimes

PharmaTimes is the UK’s leading pharmaceutical magazine, tracking the trends and issues that affect the industry here in the UK, in Europe and across the world. We deliver independent, authoritative and trustworthy content through impartial, balanced and informed opinion and analysis.

PharmaTimes print and digital magazine has a distributed circulation of 19,000, reaching right across the industry into every company and every function, bridging the gap between Pharma and the NHS.

editorial@pharmatimes.com

https://pharmatimes.com/

PharmaTimes

Categories

Social Footprints