Beyond the Buzz: How AI is Changing Med Comms Today

What has AI done for med comms lately? Sure, AI can write a term paper, poem, soliloquy – you name it – in a matter of seconds, and it promises to change life as we know it in a million different ways. But beyond the hype and speculation, what are AI’s practical applications, specifically within medical education – where accuracy, scholarship and mountains of rigorous scientific inquiry and research form the foundation of communication? How can AI further med comms right now? How will it further the med comms of tomorrow?

At Real Chemistry, we set out to answer those key questions, bringing together our leading – and very human – experts on the subject: Brandon Pletsch, president of scientific visualization and exhibit experience; Danny Bellett, AI strategy and product lead; and Jason Gardner, Ph.D., head of medical.

For our recent webinar, “Beyond the Buzz: How AI Is Changing Medical Communications,” the three sat down to discuss the role AI plays in med comms today and the once-unimaginable possibilities that lay ahead in the not-so-distant future.

Embracing AI: It Starts from Within

How do you integrate AI into a pharma client’s enterprise and offerings? We take the airline “oxygen mask” approach – make sure your mask is secure before helping others. That means ensuring that we’re firmly grounded in understanding, executing against and furthering AI’s capabilities.

To do this, we have deeply embedded AI into our organizational structure, with comprehensive onboarding and training programs, AI subject matter experts in various capability areas, and a centralized knowledge-sharing hub. AI flows throughout Real Chemistry, and this holistic approach drives innovation, which can be harnessed and shared with clients.

As Danny explained, “AI is no longer this walled garden, limited to engineers and to people working in universities. This democratization of AI empowers our teams across the organization to drive forward impactful solutions.”

AI in Med Comms: We’ve Only Just Begun

Already AI has made inroads across several Real Chemistry initiatives as dedicated AI teams explore its possibilities, including:

Concepting and scientific visualization

For Brandon, generative AI is now a regularly used tool for concepting, enabling creative teams to quicky visualize ideas and evaluate them. Also, generative AI makes it easier to communicate ideas in pitches, reducing the disconnect between an idea and its visual execution.

For storyboarding, generative AI makes it easier to convey scene direction and sequences. Generative AI can even help visualize symptoms as described by patients to help others understand what a patient may be going through. On the other hand, when it comes to depicting highly accurate medical illustrations, generative AI isn’t ready for prime time – yet.

Executive training and empowerment

Through specialty-designed training programs, we’re empowering senior leaders in partner businesses to make informed decisions as they assess, implement, and champion AI.

Peer-to-peer consensus and feedback

We’re also utilizing AI in virtual environments to change how consensus is achieved during advisory board meetings. Traditional meetings can be dominated by louder voices, potentially overshadowing valuable insights from quieter members. At Real Chemistry, we’ve developed AI tools to analyze behavioral data to ensure 100% participation, fostering a more democratic decision-making process and enhancing the quality of feedback and engagement.

Next-generation social listening

Expanding the scope of social listening, we now include AI-enhanced analysis of visual, audio and video content from social media, podcasts and conferences. Traditional social listening largely ignores these rich data sources. By leveraging AI to sift through this multimedia content, we gain a more comprehensive understanding of public sentiment, trends and key messages, enriching our strategic insights.

Our clients are already testing AI-generated synthetic market research for brand teams, which is a massive-scale insights and strategy platform.

Further upstream, Real Chemistry-internal tests are underway for scoring creative effectiveness and performance-integrated patient and healthcare professional (HCP) journey mapping, creating AI-assisted medical and sales rep training, and creating HCP-segmented personas with enterprise insights. Key explorations include:

Thought leader identification

AI-driven insights can improve how we identify and map key opinion leaders (KOLs) and experts, enabling more strategic selection and increased thought leader engagement.

For example, for one client project, AI analytics replaced 75% of the top 40 thought leaders, highlighting individuals who may not appear on traditional lists but have major influence.

AI-generated HCP personas

To refine our marketing strategies, Real Chemistry is testing AI-generated HCP personas. These personas are continually updated with new data to test messages and strategies effectively. This innovative approach allows for real-time adjustments and insights, providing a dynamic tool for our marketing teams.

“It's multimodal, it uses social and behavioral data,” explains Danny. “It understands not just the day-to-day practice life of, say, a rheumatologist. It understands a specific segment of rheumatologists and what we know from a massive amount of market research and institutional knowledge – how they go about their day-to-day, what their challenges are. Because we can sew this into the system.”

AI-powered publications model

Currently in the initial idea phase, an AI-powered publications model is set to transform the way content is created and disseminated. While AI is currently utilized for creating plain language summaries, the aim of this approach is to extend these capabilities to full manuscripts, embedding AI across the entire publication process to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.

And what about the ultimate med comms AI unicorn?

As Brandon asked Jason during the webinar, “Can you tell me when we won't have to do any referencing and annotating anymore and when that's all going to be automated or are we already there?”

That would be nice, wouldn’t it? However, given the risks of generative AI and the demand for absolute accuracy in med comms, AI-assisted annotation is an innovation that’s further out on the horizon.

For AI Unicorns to Become Real, Everyone Needs to Believe

Until AI unicorns in med comms become real, brands can prepare for the coming AI revolution by ensuring that everyone in their enterprise understands AI applications—both their potential and limitations. That especially means bringing AI skeptics into the fold.

Explains Jason, “Once we can understand what their barriers are, then that will open the gates for everyone.”

Beyond the buzz, AI is poised to generate real transformation for the entire med comms community, as long as we all embrace its potential.

Are you ready to explore AI's exponential potential in med comms? Contact us today to supercharge your AI journey .