As the pharmaceutical industry seeks to embrace digital marketing solutions, ChatGPT‘s advanced artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities are poised to transform the way that companies engage with consumers and healthcare professionals.

Now, in the interest of full transparency, I should note that I didn’t write that. ChatGPT wrote that based on the prompt: “Write the lede sentence to an article titled ‘Can ChatGPT revolutionize pharma marketing?’”

Fascination with the possibilities offered by ChatGPT and other AI-powered solutions has reached a fever pitch in recent weeks as the likes of Microsoft and Google have announced new search engine offerings.

Since its debut at the end of 2022, ChatGPT has captured the imagination of the general public and pharma marketers alike. 

Simply put, there’s a lot to like about ChatGPT and AI in general if you’re a medical marketer given that the technology has more than demonstrated its ability to assist HCPs, offer brainstorming capabilities for advertising campaigns and drive down costs. 

Faruk Capan, chief innovation officer at Eversana and CEO of Eversana Intouch, a 2022 MM+M Agency 100 honoree, said ChatGPT offers a promising business opportunity for medical advertising agencies in both the short and long term. 

Capan said that even in the few months since its launch, Eversana Intouch has used ChatGPT’s functionality to assist with video shoots and write scripts that are conscious of strict medical regulations. He noted that this condenses a process that typically can last weeks into days or even hours. 

Capan said that by leaning into what AI can do, organizations can use the innovation as a differentiator for their business, noting that “AI won’t replace you, but people using AI will.” 

“I believe that this will not just change healthcare or pharmaceutical marketing, this is going to change our lives,” he said. 

Comparing ChatGPT’s emergence to the popularization of the Internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Capan said there are bound to be some skeptics of the potential offered by AI-powered tools. However, while noting that technology will never fully replace human-to-human connection, services like ChatGPT can improve the way agencies and brands interact with the public

“[ChatGPT] will change science, this will change how we communicate and how we go about our daily lives,” he said. “I believe in the short-term, at least, it will change in a complimentary way to our humanity.” 

Manoj Hariharaputhiran, product manager at ZoomRx, a strategic healthcare consulting firm, also called the introduction of AI tools like ChatGPT a “tremendous change.”

Hariharaputhiran said he’s bullish on ChatGPT when it comes to improving pharma marketing but did note that it may take years for the advancements in the tool to match up to broader industry expectations. He added that it will serve many different applications in terms of creating content and analyzing data.

ZoomRx also published a blog post late last month detailing how the company has incorporated ChatGPT into a free message prediction tool and what it can mean for other pharma marketers down the line. 

“Though the experiment described here is only a simplistic proof-of-concept, ZoomRx is a firm believer in the potential of technology to enhance pharma decision-making and patient care,” the blog post read. 

Meanwhile, CMI Media Group, another 2022 MM+M Agency 100 honoree, is also experimenting with ChatGPT to examine its potential use cases and enhance campaigns.

Andrew Miller, EVP of digital activation at CMI Media Group, said the possibilities “could be endless” but added that there are still a lot of questions that remain before a wider rollout of the tool for campaign development can take place.

Though that hasn’t stopped other organizations from diving headfirst into the AI realm. Earlier this week, Doximity, one of the largest digital platforms for physicians, launched a beta version of a ChatGPT tool for its users. 

Mark Pappas, SVP of innovation at CMI Media Group, said that as far as being an industry tastemaker, Doximity’s decision could lend more credibility to the effectiveness of these tools for other medical marketers and organizations.

One important consideration for understanding ChatGPT is also recognizing that it’s not the only AI platform out there that could benefit medical marketers, according to Pappas. He said the agency has embraced the voice generator functionalities of AI tools to boost its audio campaigns with different voices, accents and dialects that appeal to specific audiences.

To read a January 2024 article about the best jobs pharma scientists could hire AI to assist them with, click here.