The AI Shift: Reimagining How Medical Affairs Connects with HCPs
As AI adoption accelerates, medical affairs leaders are asking three key questions: What are the latest trends in AI applications for medical affairs? Can AI improve the efficiency of medical affairs teams? And how is AI transforming medical affairs in the healthcare industry? The answers are no longer theoretical. They are already shaping how teams operate today.
In a recent fireside-style discussion, Shelby Davidson, Associate Account Director at H1, sat down with Kunj Gohil, Head of Medical Engagement at BioMarin, to explore these questions and how AI is reshaping the way life sciences organizations engage healthcare professionals (HCPs), reflecting broader momentum across AI in life sciences.
AI in Medical Affairs Is No Longer Optional
AI is no longer a future-state concept for medical affairs. It is already embedded in how teams work, from drafting communications to synthesizing data across sources.
“We’re not only seeing an uptick in the utilization of AI in our personal lives, but we’re also seeing it in our professional lives,” Davidson noted, pointing to how quickly adoption has accelerated across roles.
For Gohil, the takeaway is even more direct. “It’s not just a buzzword. It is the next wave,” he said.
That shift mirrors what medical affairs experienced during the digital transformation era. What was once optional quickly became foundational. Today, the same is happening with AI.
Organizations that treat AI as experimental risk falling behind. Those that integrate it into core workflows will define the next standard for engagement, particularly as AI in medical affairs becomes a core capability rather than a differentiator.
Can AI Improve the Efficiency of Medical Affairs Teams?
One of the most immediate and measurable impacts of AI is operational efficiency. Across AI in pharma, organizations are already seeing measurable gains in productivity.
AI is already improving efficiency across core medical affairs workflows:
- Literature review and synthesis
- Drafting standard response letters
- Organizing and analyzing insights across datasets
- Aggregating field intelligence from multiple sources
AI excels at processing large volumes of information quickly and identifying patterns across disparate data.
“AI can read really fast… synthesize and make more connections between different data sets than I can,” Gohil said.
This directly answers one of the most common questions in the industry today:
Can AI improve the efficiency of medical affairs teams?
The answer is yes—but with an important caveat.
Efficiency gains are only meaningful if they free up time for higher-value activities. The goal is not just to do the same work faster. It is to enable teams to focus on strategic engagement, scientific exchange, and insight generation.
From Reactive to Real-time, Data-driven Engagement
Beyond efficiency, AI is enabling a more fundamental shift in how medical affairs engages with HCPs.
Traditionally, engagement has been reactive. Insights are gathered manually, analyzed periodically, and used to inform strategy after the fact. AI changes that model.
With the ability to integrate data across publications, field insights, claims, and engagement history, AI can surface trends and trigger actions in real time. In the future, this could enable:
- Trigger-based engagement based on patient or practice signals
- More personalized, relevant scientific exchange
- Faster dissemination of clinical and trial information
Gohil described a potential future where engagement becomes far more precise and timely. “HCPs do want real-time information that’s relevant,” he said.
This represents one of the most important ways AI is transforming medical affairs. It is shifting the function from intuition-driven to data-driven, from periodic to continuous.
AI Is Only As Effective As the Data Behind It
While the potential of AI is significant, its success in medical affairs ultimately depends on the quality of the data behind it.
“AI is only as good as the data,” Gohil noted.
For medical affairs teams, this means moving beyond access to information and toward the ability to surface the right insights at the right time to drive meaningful HCP engagement.
This is where structured, AI-ready data becomes critical. Platforms like H1’s HCP Universe bring together detailed profiles on millions of healthcare professionals, enriched with publications, clinical trials, congress activity, and more, all connected through AI-driven insights.
By applying AI to this structured data layer, teams can move beyond manual searching and fragmented systems to identify the most relevant experts, build more targeted engagement strategies, and stay aligned with real-time scientific activity.
The result is not just greater efficiency, but more precise, data-driven engagement that scales.
Getting Started: From Experimentation to Adoption
For organizations still early in their AI journey, the advice is straightforward: start now.
“At some point, you just have to start,” Gohil said.
Waiting for the perfect strategy or the perfect tool can lead to inaction. Meanwhile, the technology continues to evolve.
A more effective approach is to focus on core medical affairs workflows and build from there:
- Start with high-impact, low-risk use cases like literature review, insights analysis, or content development
- Use AI to consolidate fragmented data sources into a more unified view of HCP activity and engagement
- Equip teams with training so they can confidently apply AI in their day-to-day work
- Scale what works, rather than running disconnected pilots
The organizations that move now, grounding AI in real-world workflows and high-quality data, will define how medical affairs operates in the years ahead, as AI in pharma companies continues to evolve from experimentation to enterprise-wide adoption.
