Healthcare professionals aren’t immune to societal shifts toward gathering information from artificial intelligence tools, social media and streaming content, opening up new opportunities for health and pharma marketers to reach them.
A new report from Assembled Intelligence and inVibe sheds light on how HCPs are using these technologies in their work—and what that means for marketers.
Perhaps most interestingly, the survey of 150 U.S. clinicians showed that many are getting in on the AI hype with regular use of tools like ChatGPT and built-in offerings from Google and Microsoft for professional purposes. That said, though the HCPs were found to use AI tools almost equally as much as traditional search engines for researching and staying current on the latest data, trust in the tech remains an issue.
As one respondent who regularly uses ChatGPT and UpToDate noted, “I question it because I’m making life-changing, life-saving decisions. And so, I have to follow up on a lot of what I’m reading.”
Because of that barrier, the report suggests that marketers should seek to make their content “AI-ready,” but rely on those channels predominantly to “spot intent and drive visits” before redirecting HCPs to more trusted websites where they can access clearly sourced evidence.
“We expected to confirm that HCPs primarily trust peer-reviewed sources and only tolerate other channels. While this holds true, the adoption of AI tools is more significant than anticipated,” Chuck Hemann, chief business officer at Assembled Intelligence and author of the report, said in a statement to Fierce Pharma Marketing.
“For pharma marketers, this means awareness channels are best used to spark interest and prompt follow-up, not to carry the evidentiary weight of your messaging,” Hemann continued. “Instead, focus on creating content that makes evidence easy to find, quick to scan, and simple to check.”
Elsewhere in the report, the surveyed physicians cited social media and streaming content as common avenues for increasing their awareness of and interest in new treatments.
That’s about the extent of it, however, as the HCPs noted that they don’t go much further than “limited awareness and re-engagement” with either channel. When they do seek out professional education via social media and streaming, it’s typically in “more structured” video content and podcasts.
Overall, the clinicians surveyed still rely primarily on traditional search and industry sources—like journals, clinical guidelines and other evidence-based publications—as their most-trusted digital tools.
For marketers, per the report, that preference emphasizes the importance of structuring webpages around the actual questions HCPs are asking and the most crucial data points, and prioritizing paid search to ensure those pages make it to the top of clinicians’ search results.
