Pharma Talks: AI in Pharma Marketing – Top Use Cases That Deliver

Summary

In the latest episode of Pharma Talks, host Natalia Andrichuk delves into the world of AI in pharma marketing, highlighting the importance of AI literacy beyond mere automation. She is joined by Thomas Musk from CTC Health and Manuel Mito from CTS Health to discuss how AI use cases drive value in pharma marketing. The conversation explores starting small with AI integration, leveraging agentic approaches, and envisioning a near future where hyper-personalized content becomes the norm. The episode also covers the crucial role of human expertise in guiding AI applications and the importance of AI literacy in maximizing productivity.

Highlights

• Thomas Musk emphasizes starting small with AI to progressively increase productivity 📈.
• Manuel Mito discusses the power of agentic AI in creating dedicated teams for pharma tasks 🏥.
• There's potential for hyper-personalized content delivery in the near future, changing marketing strategies ✨.
• AI literacy and strategic use are essential to avoid being overwhelmed by rapid tech changes 📚.

Key Takeaways

• AI literacy is key in pharma marketing, evolving beyond chatbots to strategic tools 🤖.
• Start small with AI to build infrastructure and gradually increase productivity 💡.
• Agentic AI approaches create dedicated teams for specific tasks, boosting efficiency 🌟.
• Human expertise remains crucial in guiding AI and ensuring effective domain application 🧠.

Overview

In this engaging Pharma Talks episode, host Natalia Andrichuk explores the transformative role of AI in pharma marketing. With her guests Thomas Musk and Manuel Mito, they unpack the value AI brings beyond automation, emphasizing the importance of starting small and building the right infrastructure. By leveraging AI to enhance both productivity and intelligence, they argue, companies can gain significant advantages.

The discussion also ventures into the growing trend of agentic AI, where AI is used to create small, focused teams dedicated to specific tasks. This approach is lauded for its potential to enhance efficiency and productivity in the highly specialized pharma industry. Both experts agree that while AI is a powerful tool, human expertise remains an irreplaceable component, especially in tailoring AI to specific industry needs.

A recurring theme is the need for enhanced AI literacy across organizations to fully leverage AI's capabilities. The rapid evolution of AI technology demands not only strategic deployment but also education and training to ensure teams can utilize these tools effectively. With the potential for AI to revolutionize content personalization and administrative processes, pharma marketers are on the brink of a major transformation.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Welcome In the 'Introduction and Welcome' chapter, Natalia Andrichuk, host of Pharma Talks, opens the discussion about the significance of AI literacy in pharmaceutical marketing. Natalia emphasizes the importance of understanding AI beyond basic automation and tools like chat GPT, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of strategic applications of AI in the industry.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Introduction of Guests and Opening Discussion In this opening chapter, the host introduces the guests for the discussion. The guests are Thomas Musk, founder and managing director of CTC Health, and Manuel Mito, an MBA partner and head of AI consultancy for CTS Health. The chapter sets the stage for a thought-provoking dialogue on the topic at hand.
• 01:00 - 02:00: AI Use Cases in Pharma Marketing In this chapter titled 'AI Use Cases in Pharma Marketing', the discussion opens with a question about the value and transformational impact of AI in digital marketing within the pharmaceutical industry. The focus is on identifying the AI use cases that are delivering the most value. It is acknowledged that these use cases can be subjective and that a deeper understanding beyond just the identification of use cases is necessary. The chapter ends with a prompt to elaborate further on the subject.
• 02:00 - 03:00: AI Agents and Their Potential This chapter introduces the topic of AI agents and their potential applications. The speaker, Thomas, addresses a question about strategies for maximizing the effectiveness of AI use cases. He emphasizes two primary approaches that companies currently use: first, leveraging AI to enhance productivity, and second, utilizing AI to enhance the intelligence extracted from data. This suggests a shift in focus from not only using AI for efficiency but also for gaining deeper insights, thus presenting a broader perspective on AI implementations.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Humanization of Pharma Marketing The chapter discusses the humanization of pharmaceutical marketing, focusing on the integration of language models and AI technologies. It emphasizes starting small by implementing infrastructure that leverages large language models, particularly within platforms like Microsoft. The potential for creating agents that offload work is highlighted, showcasing the immediate and longer-term benefits of these technologies. The chapter captures the speaker's enthusiasm and confidence in the potential of AI to transform pharma marketing.
• 04:00 - 05:00: The Role of AI in Enhancing Customer Experience In the chapter titled 'The Role of AI in Enhancing Customer Experience,' the discussion centers around the vast potential AI holds for transforming organizational operations beyond the existing scope. Manuel, a prominent contributor to this field, is highlighted as he is deeply involved in exploring these emerging possibilities. Thomas introduces the subject, handing the discussion over to Manuel, who acknowledges Natalia for facilitating the meeting. Manuel promises to delve deeper into Thomas's remarks, particularly focusing on recent developments regarding AI agents, which are considered a new phase in the massive evolution of AI.
• 05:00 - 06:00: The Importance of Strategy in AI Adoption The chapter emphasizes the significance of strategically adopting AI to enhance productivity. It highlights the trend of using AI for targeted purposes, forming small, specialized teams for particular tasks, especially in specific industries like pharmaceuticals. This focused approach is portrayed as a powerful method for leveraging AI effectively.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Investment in AI and AI Literacy The chapter discusses the rapid evolution and growing positive reception of AI tools such as Copilot and custom GPTs.
• 07:00 - 08:00: Conclusion and Future Topics The chapter discusses the potential future directions of AI development, emphasizing a shift towards more agent-centric approaches. It highlights the role of AI in enhancing human intelligence by efficiently analyzing large volumes of data. The chapter concludes with a brief nod to using AI to manage less desirable tasks.

Pharma Talks: AI in Pharma Marketing – Top Use Cases That Deliver Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Pharma Talks. I'm your host Natalia Andrichuk and today we are diving deep into AI literacy in pharma marketing. Why it means why we need to know more why the strategy so important and how we can truly leverage AI beyond just automation and beyond the well-known things of chat GPT. So let me
• 00:30 - 01:00 introduce our guests to explore this topic. I am very excited to welcome Thomas Musk, founder and managing director of CTC Health and Manuel Mito, MBA partner and head of AI consultancy for CTS health. Please Thomas Manuel please great to have you here guys and please welcome jump to the topic and let us go into very interesting discussion
• 01:00 - 01:30 with the very first question we have in our agenda which is about AI value and transformation for the digital marketing. So which AI use cases are currently delivering the most value in pharma marketing? We all know that the use cases are very subjective and we need something more than just to know the use case. So can we elaborate a
• 01:30 - 02:00 little bit about the strategy or about how we can have the most of these use cases please Thomas? Yeah first of all Natalyia it's great to be here. Um, it's a it's a great question. So, we uh the way we look at it and when we look at use cases, there's probably two things that companies are doing at this point in time, we can leverage AI to increase our productivity, but more interesting, we can leverage AI to increase our intelligence that we get out of those
• 02:00 - 02:30 models. And one of my favorite use cases right now is to start small. Um, many companies are putting an infrastructure in place where they have access to a large language model today. um a lot are using the Microsoft suit and there's a lot of opportunity today to create simple use cases building agents that really help take work away from you. So that is something I'm personally very um passionate about and I do see a lot of potential in that in the very short term. Now, obviously in the mid and long
• 02:30 - 03:00 term, there's way more that AI can do for companies. And uh I'll let Manuel comment on this because this is his baby where he's exploring a lot of those ways. Yeah, thank you very much, Thomas. And first of all, I mean, thank you, Natalia, for for uh hosting us today. And um I mean from my side, let me double click on uh on what Thomas said because uh in in the last few months we have been hearing a lot about AI agents uh as like the new evolution somehow of
• 03:00 - 03:30 the AI trend and I think this is very powerful when it comes to the to the productivity because uh the agent agentic approach is finally going into the direction of using AI for specific specific purposes. So this is like uh uh really creating small fully dedicated teams for specific uh task in a in an industry like pharma that it is very specific. This is very very powerful. So
• 03:30 - 04:00 this is something that we see more and more uh evolving. We see copilot studio uh evolving and going very I mean growing way better than it was a few months ago. I mean a few months ago we I mean we never heard so frequently saying that copilot was a great tool in in the past but now I mean we keep hearing more and more positive feedback about it and um same for uh custom GPTs code projects
• 04:00 - 04:30 and so on. So we go into a direction that it is um more uh agentic let's say and then also the other thing that Thomas you mentioned about um let's say using AI to enhance our intelligence AI is great in analyzing um let's say a big amount of data and using AI to I mean getting not only the stuff that we don't like done
• 04:30 - 05:00 but also having a new perspective is really really uh I mean fruitful in terms of new insights and and so on. And these are two maybe groups of use cases not specific use cases but groups of use cases that are really showing a big potential in bringing value to to pharma specifically. That's very interesting with this uh with this statement. uh do you think is it possible to think about
• 05:00 - 05:30 the humanization of pharma marketing where agentic AIs will be doing the most of our works so uh social listening I don't know interaction between the channels getting us more insights about those interactions or they will just assist what do you think about that very provocative question Um I mean um that things are moving so fast
• 05:30 - 06:00 I think it's impossible to predict. I think where we are today I do not share this vision today because what we see there is a lot of hope and dream that this is going to happen but we still see that the domain expertise is so important in guiding and uh and you know guiding the agents that we have now what's the future going to look like it is very difficult to predict. I mean we talk about AGI, ASI um anything is possible I would say but in the current state I still believe that there is a very important role for the human being
• 06:00 - 06:30 in that domain expertise is augmented with AI and I think that is really what everybody needs to do today uh and that has implications obviously for your workforce but also the capabilities you're putting in when it comes to AI but yeah that would be my view today but it's provocative question exactly and here we are to ask and answer those questions questions and yet if you will have to pick one AI tool that gives the best value in terms of customer experience in pharma marketing what it
• 06:30 - 07:00 would be and why maybe I can maybe I can take this one because I I think it is yeah you need to support your partner you know maybe I can I can I can take this one also because it is connected to the humanization uh because from my side I think that AI sports is getting more and more uh human let's say in brackets of course than it was I wouldn't say years but months uh ago. So if you look at the
• 07:00 - 07:30 the responses of the uh let's say most famouslms and so on they are sounding more and more human and so on. So this kind of trend is going on. So if I I was thinking about I mean an AI tool that can really I mean increase this um I mean the productivity the customer experience I mean bring value to the business. I I think that it is again
• 07:30 - 08:00 related to the agent to the creation of the agents but in a way that it is no code meaning that enabling the the people without uh let's say development uh skill to let's say put their domain knowledge their industry knowledge at the service of the of the business using AI. So I'm I'm thinking about this kind of uh tools that are able to uh enable
• 08:00 - 08:30 let's say a marketeteer to be fast and agile in taking um in taking action. So this is one of the thing that I I think flexible zero or low code uh tool for AI agent creation could really make um the difference. But Thomas feel free to to jump in. Oh, great. I mean, we're very passionate about this that there is a piece of humanization how we start to
• 08:30 - 09:00 interact with those agents and um you can imagine when it comes to coaching, training, all of that. This is completely going to change. The use cases are so powerful not only because of the quality and the intelligence we can put into the agents, but also they provide a safe environment for you. You can use them 24/7 in any language whenever you want. And there is more and more customization that is happening there. So we're very excited about this and again this is going to help augment your workforce while using those tools. They're unprecedented in terms of what they can do. Um when it comes Yeah. when
• 09:00 - 09:30 it comes to conversational AI. Um you ask provocatively what else are we excited about? I mean as a marketeer I would be very excited that the dream of fulfilling a hyperpersonalization of content meaning in real time targeting the right customer with the right content at the right format that he wants. We've been chasing this for ages. Um I think only AI is going to allow us to do this and here I do believe we're very close to getting this done. Um so that is one we should be very excited. I
• 09:30 - 10:00 would estimate in the next one or two years. This is going to become the standard and honestly we're all going to be winners with this. Me myself as a consumer I want the information that is relevant to me and that technology is going to allow this to us and that's going to fundamentally change uh the way we do marketing. And um the last one I personally I'm looking forward also to is any all of those admin tasks we have to do. There's a lot of regulations in the pharma industry. Um, I'm looking at
• 10:00 - 10:30 MLR reviews, approval processes, all of this. I do believe AI is going to have a big place in that. Um, it's going to help us accelerate. And by the way, we need this because if we want to hyperpersonalize content, that means we got to augment by a factor 10x 100x the content that we're going to produce in real time. So all of this needs to be approved. So also here, but we're very excited as a marketeer about um seeing big changes in the next one to two years. Okay. and and to the Yeah, please go ahead. No, I mean I just
• 10:30 - 11:00 wanted to to ask one thing because uh I mean of course Natalia you are asking this question to us now but you are also let's say a great expert of of this. So now I'm curious to ask you the same question because I'm curious to hear your your opinion on this. So I would like to ask you the exactly the same question to you. Yeah, it's a very good question. I I love this question. So first of all um uh for me like uh what for my
• 11:00 - 11:30 understanding personally so strategy becomes more and more important now because like technology is evolving so fast as Thomas says it is changing monthly it's not yearly now monthly and weekly we have new and new possibilities as marketeers so to make sure we are not overwhelmed we are not lost and We are not losing our track in business. So we need to have our strategy. Strategy
• 11:30 - 12:00 matters more than ever today. So if you will decide that within all the amazing capabilities of AI all of AI tools because there are plentiful today. So you want to accelerate particular documentation in clinical trials. So you are going for that and you are luckily will arrive to your point into the next couple of months not not years like it was before. If you will um target MLR
• 12:00 - 12:30 and um and content creation because today creating of the content with AI just generating is unseparated from the MLR process itself because with a AI capabilities while generating the content we can check all the legislations of all the markets and we can add as many rules to those checks as we need. Also we can provide the uh
• 12:30 - 13:00 overview of the uh claims the references. So all of that is the reality and today the market for these type of tools is so big. So that um our industry uh pharma is receiving a great chance to find the strategic partner uh of of of their need of their of their choice today. so flexible enough helping them to understand and to implement
• 13:00 - 13:30 their rules for this uh acceleration. So there is an amazing opportunity opening today from my perspective. Yeah. Thank you. Oh thank you for the question. So uh there is another provocative question from my side if you're not mine. If you were afraid today like tomorrow okay ever if your marketing budget let us say doubled okay how you can and you can spend it only on AI so what you would do
• 13:30 - 14:00 with that how it well uh I mean that's that's a very good question so first of all it really depends at which point of the year it my marketing budget doubles it could be a a good news or a bad news, it depends. But uh anyhow, jokes aside, um I if I have to think about how to invest heavily in AI, I think the very first things that comes top of mind is the is
• 14:00 - 14:30 to the literacy part. There are um let's say very interesting papers that are saying that basically if you you use AI basically without knowing how to use AI your performances are decreasing. So a big mistake is to give the AI tool to people that are not able to use it because actually you would reduce their productivity, their
• 14:30 - 15:00 effectiveness and so on. So I would definitely invest heavily into AI literacy training uh programs and and so on because the real uh let's say power will come from the synergy of human and and AI. So that's that would be my blue chip let's say. Yeah. Let me just add if you're a CMO today you shouldn't only double your budget for AI, you should triple it or quadruple it in marketing.
• 15:00 - 15:30 That's the most important investment you can do today. And I totally agree with Manuel. Uh one of the first things is think getting your organization up to speed. They are not today. And if you if you're not, it's not going to happen. You can invest millions. They're never going to give you results. But if you do, you're going to achieve results very fast. The second thing I would add to that is look at organizational change management. This is a deep transformation we're going through and uh there's also a generational difference that we can see. There is the
• 15:30 - 16:00 more techsavvy new generation that comes in and there are people like myself who will need a little bit more time to explore that uh the potential of it. But for all it is possible and this is the foundation you can invest today in because you know that this technology is going to fundamentally change the way we do marketing. So, you know, you'll need to bring your workforce up to date on that. So, appreciate that question, Natalia. It's the right thing to do and I really hope you guys are contributing your budget.
• 16:00 - 16:30 Yes, we hope too. So, I I hope my CFO is listening right now and all ears about all of these things we need to do tomorrow like to double our marketing budget. Yes, absolutely agree with you. So like if we will increase literacy, if we will invest into education across organization at every level. So we will find the niche which we are not imagining today where AI will help will
• 16:30 - 17:00 accelerate and provide more values because uh uh all of our all of our businesses are focused on one thing like health providing better life giving uh like giving more chances for humanity to survive. So if we will if we will accelerate us and make sure like we are learning and we are fast enough and we generating lot of crucially important
• 17:00 - 17:30 ideas. So it will it will accelerate uh everything and hopefully improve the situation which which we will not touch today as a topic. So thank you very much. It was a fantastic conversation. Thank you Manuel. Thank you Thomas. I hope I will see you in um sometimes here again and we will talk about the next the most important topic which is not very subjective. So but how to build the AI team in pharma. This is the next
• 17:30 - 18:00 topic. Please follow us and join our podcast and you will see and you will figure out more how to build AI dream team without double investment. Delighted. Thank you for being with us. Continue on. Bye-bye.