The opportunities for AI in pharma marketing

Chapter 1: Executive summary

Chapter 2: The reality of AI in Australia

Chapter 3: The opportunities for AI in pharma marketing

Chapter 4: Managing risk in AI adoption

Chapter 5: Preparing for an AI-first future

Chapter 3: The opportunities for AI in pharma marketing

While adoption may still be uneven, industry leaders agree that the opportunity ahead is significant. AI will be transformational, HealthPoint Research Founder, AJ Rollsy said in a podcast called future pharma.

“It's a great opportunity, but I think as an industry, we're still figuring out what that should look like. That definitely keeps me awake at night. “But at the same time, 14% of the population are walking around with a health issue that should be addressed by a primary care physician today, but they walk around never speaking to a doctor,” he said.

AI is also being used to speed up drug development and help with clinical trial recruitment.

“Getting clinical AI within clinical trials and clinical operations supply chain, even with things like PBAC submissions. That's a key area,” Slaven highlighted.

However, in pharmaceutical marketing, there are several ways it can impact, including:

Solving HCP issues
Personalisation at scale
Health literacy and giving patients better information
Solving administrative issues
Redefining reporting

Solving HCP issues

For pharmaceutical commercial teams, the most immediate opportunities for AI sit at the intersection of clinician experience, efficiency and access to information. At a basic level, almost every doctor has put aside a certain amount of their time doing work that they don’t feel is their core business.

“Often they're needing to be doing form filling kind of activity that they feel is a departure from what they wanted to do their whole life, which is treat patients or to be an expert in surgery or in oncology or cardiology,” Rollsy said. “They really wanted to bring their expertise to care for patients and improve clinical outcomes and ultimately improve someone's life. But they also feel there's a bunch of other stuff they have to do,” he said.

This is where AI can help. Pharmaceutical companies can help HCPs research conditions or drugs that can help them with their day-to-day operations.

“A pharma company needs to deliver them not only a great medication to add to their armoury of clinical solutions, but great information, timely answers and sense of security that this thing is going to be safe as well as effective,” Rollsy said. “What the pharma company needs to be able to do is say to that doctor, I recognise your emotional needs (even if they don't say it in that overt language) and then provide them everything that that doctor really needs to satisfy that need,” he continued.

Professor Michael Barnett said a lot of it is about relieving the administrative burden on physicians.

“There's a huge amount of burnout in the industry and if I can have tasks automated for me, (that will help,” he said.

As an example, he spoke about a meeting he was with a group of physicians. He asked who had read the full product information of drugs they’d prescribed. None of them had.

“I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous, but it's true. We just do not have time to read through reams. If we can have a tool that we know is accurately going to summarise the key points that are important to our practice, particularly when monitoring risk, that is just not just a timesaver but potentially a lifesaver,” he said.

Healthcare professionals often report difficulty locating essential clinical data, particularly on brand websites. They often rely on outdated navigation or generic search engines that don’t recognise medical abbreviations, dosing queries or context.

AI-powered summarisation tools or brand websites can distill product information, clinical trial data and safety updates into usable insights. By developing concise, clinically relevant information at the point of need, pharmaceutical organisations can help alleviate the considerable pressures on HCPs.

Personalization at scale

Beyond reducing friction, AI also enables a more fundamental shift in how pharmaceutical companies engage with healthcare professionals and consumers.

Being able to personalize websites for the unique needs of each customer is critical for engagement, whether it’s a website designed for clinicians or consumers. By transforming generic interactions into meaningful conversations, personalization aims to answer queries and foster a sense of trust to help them take the next step.

For time-poor clinicians, adaptive interfaces that surface context-specific information can save them valuable minutes and increase trust. For consumers, AI-driven recommendation engines can analyse search patterns and present “next-best content” improving dwell time and conversion.

However, pharmaceutical companies in Australia are way behind, Simon Walker, Pfizer’s Commercial Operations Lead ANZ said at NEXT Pharma summit.

“We don't have that opportunity or that central focus to access that level of detail holistically, and that's where we fall down. What we do is a very fragmented approach. Each company has their own website with medical information on there,” he said.

As Michael Kirby, Country Director ANZ at WebMD explained, when it’s done right, it can be hugely impactful.

“We put that HCP in the driving seat. So we can then personalise their content in line with their behaviors. It provides them a user experience that is relevant and it's impactful. We use those insights to inform your campaigns so how you can then reach those HCPs. “Things like behavior-based targeting, next best action, how are you going to drive engagement after viewing content,” he said.

Personalization can help commercial teams ensure that content is tailored to clinicians or consumers and then delivered using the channel they prefer. It means every interaction is timely and relevant.

Improving patient education and quality use of medicines

One of the most persistent gaps in healthcare is patient education. Clinicians are acutely aware of its importance, yet time pressures often mean education is rushed or de-prioritised in favour of immediate clinical needs.

“Doctors and nurses tend not to have time to educate patients,” Britland said. It’s that education plays a critical role in how well patients understand, adhere to and engage with their treatment.

Britland believes AI presents a significant opportunity to close this gap at scale. In areas such as cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes, AI-enabled tools can support personalised, consistent and accessible education outside the consultation room.

The lowest-hanging fruit would be to use AI to record consults to when a person leaves their consultation, they have a plain language summary of the consultation.

“Normally, they can't remember being in the doctor's office, particularly with cancer. So we can start making their health literacy change overnight by using simple things like Otter (an AI transcription software). “Say they get a diagnosis of breast cancer. We can get the greatest data that's presented at the ESMO (European Society for Medical Oncology) meeting in Europe and turn it in seconds into plain language summaries and protocols for clinical trials. “We can do that today. But how many people are doing it? Probably not many,” he said.

He said that by educating patients well, it would also help with medication adherence. AI can help patients better under their condition and the role of their medicines.

“There’s a real good opportunity to educate patients really well, which means that the quality use of medicine changes,” he said.

By reinforcing key messages over time rather than relying on a single clinical interaction, AI can help patients better understand their condition and the role of their medicines.

For pharmaceutical companies, this creates an opportunity to support clinicians not only by supplying effective therapies, but by enabling high-quality, compliant educational experiences that improve adherence and reduce misuse. Ultimately, they will support better health outcomes without adding to clinician workload.

Solving administrative issues

While patient- and HCP-facing benefits are critical, some of AI’s most practical gains occur behind the scenes.

Administrative load has become one of the most significant drains on time and capability across the pharmaceutical and healthcare ecosystem.

As Slaven put it, “People are buried in administrative tasks and processes and compliance… spending hours on spreadsheets, filling out templates, reading SOPs and implementing according to SOPs.”

While these activities are essential for governance and safety, but they consume disproportionate time and energy that could otherwise be directed toward strategic work and meaningful engagement.

“We can reduce probably 50 - 60% of our churn workload with AI tomorrow,” Britland speculates.

AI offers a clear opportunity to rebalance this workload. AI can help by automating routine, rules-based tasks such as document preparation, data extraction, compliance checks and version control.

“It would free up our people from that type of work, to be doing work that is more strategic or that really matters,” Slaven said.

Importantly, this is not about replacing human interaction. Reducing administrative drag allows teams to double down on exactly those areas where human expertise and judgement add the most value.

For pharmaceutical organizations, the opportunity extends across both commercial and clinical functions. AI can reduce the admin that prevents teams from spending time with customers, understanding patient needs and supporting appropriate use of medicines.

At the same time, clinical AI applications within trials, operations, supply chain management and regulatory processes (such as PBAC submissions) offer significant efficiency gains at an affiliate level.

While AI’s role in accelerating drug discovery is often highlighted, for the marketing team, its ability to streamline administrative and compliance-heavy processes may deliver more immediate and practical impact.

Redefining reporting

As operational efficiency improves, AI also changes how success is measured and decisions are made.

Traditionally, marketing teams have to wait weeks or even months before they can assess whether their initiative has been effective. Often, important decisions about future campaigns or initiatives are based on incomplete or delayed data.

AI changes all that. When intelligent data is captured, it can track all interactions across the ecosystem.

For example, consider an omnichannel campaign for a patient education platform. It might include email, SMS, chatbot or website, which all generate data.

AI can track a patient’s journey through a landing page, booking with an HCP, receiving a prescription. It can track how many enquiries a health professional has had or how effective the patient material is and what needs to change.

According to RoseRx CEO Romain Bonjean, it not only results in better results but can also save money.

“By re-allocating spend to what works, organizations can save up to 20–25% of budget that might otherwise have been wasted. This not only increases profitability but also strengthens agility,” he said.

However, AI needs to be seen as core infrastructure, not an add-on