Balancing Technological & Human Support in Medication Access

In this Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Kimberley Chiang, vice president of biopharma commercial solutions at CoverMyMeds, discusses "The 2025 Medication Access Report." She highlights gaps in data-sharing and cross-functional collaboration as major bottlenecks that cause delays, rework, and increased patient burden. Chiang shares that only 3% of patients utilize support programs due to a lack of awareness. A large majority of the report's respondents plan to expand funding for patient support programs within the next 5 years due to large number of new therapies expected to come to market.

Pharmaceutical Executive: The report addresses patient and prescriber expectations for digital health tools. How do you see the balance between technology, including AI, and human support evolving in the context of medication access?
Kimberley Chiang: AI has to bring a fair and unbiased approach when it comes to medication access. The emerging use of AI, which is taking decisions out of the hands of humans and clinicians, is not ideal. It needs to strike the balance of support-not-replace. The same is true for technology and balancing the need for easy, quick digital tools that support patients finding information faster and getting education when they need it most with the need to speak to a human and have more clarity.

The utility of a digital tool when you’re overwhelmed, ill, and don’t have a good support system is where a paradox comes into play.

How do we provide the just-in-time tools for patients with some digital sophistication, while still recognizing that there is going to continue to be a significant need for patients to seek help through a variety of channels? That’s where patient support program engagement comes in. You are able to balance tools for patients who want to use them with patients who want to speak to humans.

Restrictive programs are something I would caution pharma against. There’s not only one way to do things, and there are efficient ways to have human interaction. The industry really needs to look at that. How can we ensure that the right patient gets the right resource? AI can help us understand that fragmentation and the dimensionalization. When there’s complexity with a patient population, AI could begin the journey and know when to pass things to humans.

We need to strike that balance between using AI and identifying when a patient needs to talk to a human.

If you’ve used chatbots and other AI tools that exist today, there’s a point when you refine as much as you possible can and you’re still unsatisfied. We need to have excellent identification through AI of where the journey begins and ends. The technology can only get us so far and we need to offer patients the flexibility to receive the support they need in the manner in which they feel is best for them.

The fair and unbiased approach is going to require significant and diverse data sets. AI is only as good as the information it’s feeding from, so we need to make sure that we as an industry are looking at fair and unbiased data sets that we are making decisions from. Patients and providers also deserve to know how decisions are being made on their behalf. As an industry, that is going to be a challenge to us. Ensuring that we are protecting the privacy of the patient throughout that journey is paramount.

There’s great hope for AI in the ability to get patients to the support they need faster. There is work for the industry to do, however, in creating those fair and unbiased data sets.