This is uncomfortable for pharma marketers. But future is reality

I recently launched our second book, A Handbook of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Electronic Health Records (EHRs), at the Conferences of Cardiologists, Nephrologists, Paediatricians, and Sexologists. Many doctors came up to me at my company stall, not to talk about brands or molecules but to ask about AI.

“Which one should we use?" "What should we use it for?" “How do we become AI-ready?" "What will be the impact?”

My answer surprised some of them. I said, “No one taught you how to use WhatsApp, Facebook, or Instagram. You learnt because you wanted to. AI will be even easier. The real change is not learning tools. It is changing thinking.”

When computers came, it took years; when the internet came, it took years; when digital marketing came, it took years to change formats.

AI is different. It is compressing years into months. That is why the bigger risk is not adoption. It is mindset. And marketers, especially in healthcare, need a reset. The old playbook is quietly breaking.

For over two decades, healthcare marketing followed a simple formula.

Create awareness, remind to win attention, convert, and get prescriptions. Some few marketers and companies went to drive a click and succeeded, though to a certain extent. Some marketers tried to drive clicks and did see short-term success. But most of those efforts were one-time builds, sites and apps that were never revisited or updated later.

You may be read but not necessarily be visited

Keeping it to digital, you have surely used search engines; now for the same thing, you may be using an AI. So, your move is from Google to ChatGPT, with questions being similar but getting crisper answers analysed and scripted to suit your questions, to the point of just links to the site.

The “click” itself is losing power.

Research cited in recent discussions by firms such as Bain and Deloitte shows a growing portion of searches end without a website visit. People get their answers directly from summaries of AI tools. AI tools now read, compare, and present information instantly.

Ask yourself honestly: If a patient gets a reliable answer without visiting your website, did you lose? Or did you actually win?

Most pharma dashboards still celebrate traffic, impressions, and engagement time. But if AI becomes the layer between your content and the patient, those numbers will slowly start lying.

You need to write now to impress the robots too, as your audience is no longer only human. Earlier, we wrote for doctors or patients. Now we also write for machines that read on behalf of humans. 

An AI system doesn’t admire your campaign visuals. It doesn’t appreciate clever taglines.

It doesn’t get impressed by awards. It values clarity, structure, credibility, and safety. In simple words, AI prefers a well-written FAQ over a beautiful brochure or literature. That is uncomfortable for marketers. But it is reality.

The new battlefield: 'Answer Share'

My father-in-law recently searched a brand name on ChatGPT. The answer he got described uses that were completely different from why his doctor had prescribed it. The brand has multiple indications, but his specific case wasn’t mentioned. That confused him. He immediately called his doctor and asked why he was given a medicine for a problem he didn’t even have.

The doctor explained the rationale, cleared the misunderstanding, and all was fine. Maybe this is the new normal now; patients don’t just take prescriptions; they cross-check them.

The most valuable real estate in the future may not be page one of Google. It is the 5–6 lines of answer a patient sees when they ask a question. Patients will ask:

• “Is this safe with my diabetes?”

• “Why am I feeling dizzy after this medicine?”

• “When should acidity be taken seriously?”

• “Is this symptom dangerous?”

Your brand may be well-established in terms of prescriptions and overall value, yet it may remain unclear to patients. This lack of clarity is significant.

The AI models will blend sources, guidelines, hospital pages, articles, forums, and sometimes, yes, brand sites. If your content is not structured, cited, and trustworthy, you simply won’t appear in that answer layer. If your content isn’t discoverable or indexed, it may simply not exist in the AI layer.

Online or offline—this affects everyone

Some marketers think, “We are strong in on-ground promotion. This is digital talk.” But patients who walk into clinics are already AI-influenced. Carers are reading summaries before meeting doctors.

Young doctors themselves are cross-checking information faster than ever. AI is shaping the conversation before your MR enters the room. So this is not online vs offline. This is information vs influence.

Content will need to grow up. Healthcare websites often became campaign hubs: glossy pages, long PDFs, complex navigation, lead capture first, education later.

But the future is where trust will become your real currency

Clear Q&A formats, plain language side-effect education, symptom–cause–action explainers, red-flag warnings, “When to consult a doctor” guidance, medical references and dates. Not because regulators demand it. But because AI prefers it.

In an AI-curated world, credibility signals will matter more than slogans: medical reviewer names, references from guidelines or journals, Updated dates, responsible language, honest boundaries. If your content sounds promotional, AI systems may down-rank it. If it sounds educational and balanced, it may get used.

That is a big shift for pharma storytelling.

Compliance must move earlier. Earlier, medical/compliance checked content at the end. In the AI era, compliance must be built into design because the risk is not only what you say. It is how your content can be quoted, remixed, or misunderstood.

The real reset marketers need

Old thinking: “How do I bring them to my page?”

New thinking: “How do I become the most reliable answer?”

Old thinking: “Let’s launch a campaign.”

New thinking: “Let’s build a trusted knowledge system.”

Old thinking: “We need impressions.”

New thinking: “We need correct understanding.”

A practical starting point. Brand teams can begin with what I feel is the future. Build a top 200 patient-question bank, create simple answers with references, break PDFs into short, usable modules, show reviewer names and update dates, highlight red-flag guidance, track “Answer Share”, train teams to write in simple, structured language, and make pages fast and accessible. This will be the future, and human writing is always best.

AI is not just another marketing tool. It is becoming the distribution system for health information. And in healthcare, distribution shapes behaviour. Behaviour shapes outcomes. Outcomes shape trust. If we keep chasing clicks while patients chase answers, we will slowly lose relevance. It’s not about learning a new app.
It is about unlearning old thinking.  This is not a small upgrade.

It is a reset.

(Pawan Kulkarni is a seasoned pharma brand and marketing professional working as General Manager – Corporate for J.B. Chemicals & Pharma. He has co-authored two handbooks on artificial intelligence for doctors.)