Proactive Engagement: How AI-Driven Alerts are Transforming HCP Outreach
The benefits for brand teams in bolstering their rapid-response capability.
Patient Analytics and AI,
Team Lead
Patient Analytics and AI,
Solutions, IQVIA
In the post-COVID-19 healthcare landscape, pharmaceutical companies face novel challenges in engaging healthcare providers (HCPs). Access remains limited in many cases, demands on HCP attention are at an all-time high, and the proliferation of generics and biosimilars has intensified market competition. To succeed in this environment, brands must optimize their engagement across digital and field channels while ensuring their messages reach HCPs at precisely the right moment in the treatment decision journey.
The evolution of HCP targeting
Traditionally, HCP engagement has been largely retrospective, based on historical data that often arrives too late to influence critical treatment decisions. In today’s competitive environment, where commercial teams are asked to do more with less and HCP attention comes at a premium, this approach is no longer sufficient. The increasing sophistication of market access barriers and rising competition demands a more precise, proactive strategy.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have transformed this landscape by enabling complex, predictive alerts based on real-time data from numerous datasets. This technology facilitates more focused outreach to HCPs, resulting in a more receptive customer audience, optimized engagement spending, and better patient outcomes.
Real-time intelligence: The game-changer
The key differentiator in today’s HCP engagement is the ability to process and act on data in near real-time. Advanced daily data processing systems can now handle hundreds of millions of prescription and medical claims records each day, delivering the lowest possible latency from clinical event to actionable insight. This represents a significant advance over traditional processing systems, which typically introduce delays of two weeks or more—an eternity in competitive markets where prescription decisions are made in days rather than weeks.
The power lies in combining speed with precision. The system achieves this by analyzing patterns across thousands of different variables, ranging from clinical events to HCP digital behavior, enabling engagement that is both timely and highly targeted (see Figure 1).
Beyond traditional alerts: The AI advantage
Traditional alert systems often rely on reactive, history-based approaches or simple business rules with limited complexity. In contrast, AI-powered alerts can make proactive predictions about future events by leveraging hundreds or thousands of unique medical and clinical variables across multiple datasets. The technology continues to evolve and incorporate an expanding array of data sources, including medical and prescription claims, payer rejections and reversals, HCP digital behavior, electronic medical records, lab data, and consumer profile information.
The integration of these alerts into existing systems and workflows has been carefully designed to enhance rather than disrupt existing processes. This seamless integration enables sales teams to create more tactical, personalized messaging based on comprehensive data profiles, leading to deeper and more meaningful conversations with HCPs. Importantly, the alerts are designed to be part of a broader holistic sales process, complementing rather than replacing existing call planning and engagement strategies.
Current shift and implementation
The acceptance of AI-powered alerts has evolved significantly over the past six years. Where once extensive explanation and convincing were needed, there is now growing recognition of AI’s essential role in pharmaceutical sales. However, successful implementation still requires careful attention to change management and training.
It’s crucial for sales representatives to be comfortable with AI-powered alerts and understand how to leverage them effectively. This involves comprehensive training before deployment, helping teams understand not just how to use the alerts but how they fit into the broader engagement strategy. While end users aren’t expected to be technical experts in AI models, they should understand the type of patient population being identified and what stage of the journey they’re in when interacting with relevant HCPs.
Measuring impact and success
The effectiveness of AI-powered alerts is measured with multiple metrics. For field-based alerts, key indicators include conversion rates at both the patient and HCP level, such as new diagnoses and prescription starts. Digital alerts are evaluated through traditional engagement metrics, such as open rates and click-through rates, while qualitative feedback from sales representatives provides valuable insights into real-world effectiveness.
The return-on-investment assessment goes beyond traditional metrics to examine incremental sales generated from these programs. This comprehensive evaluation approach helps ensure that the technology is delivering meaningful business impact while improving the quality of HCP interactions.
The future of pharma sales engagement
AI techniques continue to advance in speed, accuracy, and complexity, with the ability to analyze an ever-increasing number of datasets. This isn’t just an opportunity; it’s becoming a competitive necessity. Organizations must invest in their AI capabilities and understanding to avoid falling behind in an increasingly sophisticated industry.
The future points toward even more precise targeting, incorporating advanced machine learning algorithms such as deep learning and neural networks. We’re already seeing the emergence of sophisticated synchronized engagement workflows. For example, an HCP treats a patient or conducts digital research, triggering a same-day pre-call email followed by an in-person sales visit the next day.
This level of coordinated multichannel engagement represents the future of pharmaceutical sales.
The incorporation of more complex datasets covering both patient clinical information and HCP receptiveness will continue to advance, powering increasingly sophisticated alerts. Speed of processing and deployment will also advance as the industry matures, with daily alert programs offering the potential for near real-time engagement. This evolution is particularly crucial in competitive markets where minutes can make the difference in reaching HCPs at the right moment for treatment decisions.
Preparing for the future
Success in this evolving landscape requires biopharmaceutical organizations to reorient their strategies and internal technologies toward a real-time future. This includes upgrading customer and patient relationship management systems and other tools and procedures to handle low-latency processing, ensuring engagement strategies are designed to take full advantage of real-time insights, and maintaining ongoing training programs to help teams maximize the value of these sophisticated tools.
Companies should start by familiarizing sales teams with the benefits of AI-powered technologies and how to best leverage them to enhance current sales flows. Regular workshops with field teams can help identify the challenges they face and demonstrate how this technology can alleviate those challenges.
The transformation of HCP engagement through AI-driven alerts is a fundamental change in how companies interact with HCPs. As technology continues to evolve and improve, those who embrace these advances will be best positioned to deliver the right message at the right time, ultimately driving better outcomes for both their businesses and patients.
Stephanie Roy is Sr. Principal, Patient Analytics and AI, Team Lead; Göksu Dogan is Sr. Principal, Patient Analytics and AI; both with Global Commercial Solutions, IQVIA
