Engagement leads have long assumed Healthcare Providers (HCPs) to be behind on digital trends. 

This has resulted in pharma experiencing what we’ve observed in other industries: the unceremonious death of omnichannel.

The belief in controllable customer journeys has been at the core of the healthcare industry’s approach to engagement. Efforts to carefully calibrate every interaction point are endless. Pharmaceutical companies decide when, how, and where they disperse information, feeding it to their audience through hyper-individualized segmentation, aligning each content piece to the precise preferences of HCPs to make sure they meet them exactly where they’re most perceptive to specific messaging. All roads lead to our websites, seems to have been the motto. But not anymore: The arrival of a new player has brought an end to this era.

AI allows audiences to pick and choose precisely what they want to see and when they want to see it, all without the hassle of juggling multiple platforms. This new reality forces companies to completely re-evaluate their customer journeys.

THE NEW KID(S) ON THE BLOCK

Who exactly stole away the audience, and what makes those new players so attractive to HCPs?

The growing desire for minimal interactions plays directly into what chatbots do best: providing answers without the laborious manual scanning of website after website. If you’ve recently spent time with a busy clinician, you will have noticed the shift. Where a few minutes might previously have been spent navigating a company website between rounds, clinicians are now turning to more frictionless AI solutions, and “generic” chatbots (like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude) aren’t the only competition anymore. New HCP-specific targeting tools are emerging rapidly across the life sciences landscape. These tools are occupying an increasingly specialized niche, as can be seen with the emergence of OpenEvidence or ChatGPT Health4. OpenEvidence is reportedly already used by over 40% of HCPs. And what we are seeing is likely just the beginning.

What are engagement leads left with when their audience moves on? First efforts to adapt to this new reality by ways of website-optimization are well-intended, but don’t make for a sustainable long-term strategy. Reactive offerings such as AI-readable content layers built directly into websites have gathered some attention, but they, too, will not suffice; especially as we expect that specialized HCP targeting tools will select their input data carefully. After all, one can optimize a website to perfection, but without anyone ever reaching it, those are efforts spent in vain.

UNDERSTANDING THE NEW LAY OF THE LAND

Digital leaders will want to understand the gravitational shift they are facing before they move to adapt. To consider AI as simply another player in the omnichannel universe would be a grave underestimation. This new reality requires a fundamental reassessment in how pharmaceutical companies approach both influence and value creation.

Specialized AI systems have shown great favor for sources that appear collectively validated (e.g. peer-reviewed publications, professional societies and educational platforms). They operate within ecosystems of validated knowledge rather than relying on company-owned websites. This development marks a move towards collective legitimacy, and digital leaders will want to pay close attention to that.

In this new world, third-party platforms are no longer merely peripheral players to engage on a need-to-basis. Influence in the future will depend on both contributions to the sources AI draws from as well as meaningful collaborations with HCP-targeting clinical knowledge tools. Whoever wants to matter will have to navigate the new knowledge ecosystem instead of staying focused on channel orchestration alone.

HOW ARCONDIS CAN HELP YOU NAVIGATE THE CHANGE

AI is redefining the rules of engagement in healthcare. Instead of incremental tweaks, companies need strategic clarity. Arcondis helps organizations understand what these shifts mean in practice and how to set the right priorities for the years ahead.

1. Redefining the HCP Personas of the Future. We help clients rethink their audience models based on emerging AI-driven behaviors and information pathways. Providing a realistic view of where traditional engagement will continue to drive value will enable leadership teams to make decisions grounded in actual HCP behavior in an AI-first world.
2. Understanding the Cross Channel Impact. AI changes the relevance of every engagement touchpoint, from websites to congresses to scientific publications. We work with teams to assess the implications across their full engagement ecosystem by identifying where existing approaches remain effective, where adjustments are needed, and where long held assumptions require a fundamental rethink.
3. Making the AI Landscape Actionable. The rapid rise of general and highly specialized AI tools introduces both opportunity and complexity. Arcondis maintains a structured overview of this evolving landscape and adapts it to each client’s context. This helps decision makers understand which technologies will influence HCP information discovery, how quickly change is unfolding, and what strategic responses are required.