Going Beyond AI Strategy: Real Chemistry’s Playbook for Improving Healthcare Commercialization

To say artificial intelligence (AI) is having a moment is putting it way too mildly. It's clearly here to stay. Generative AI, which uses deep learning techniques to create human-like language from massive amounts of data, is expected to add from $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy and as much as $100 billion of that in the pharmaceutical and medical product industries alone.

We’re not surprised by any of this, because at Real Chemistry we’ve been working in machine learning and AI for more than a decade. Healthcare is ripe for transformation through AI, beyond the obvious benefits the intersection of computer science, data and biology bring to drug discovery, and we’re working to get it there.

In this three-part series, we’re peeling back the layers on this transformation. This article begins by sharing Real Chemistry’s five-step framework – our AI x Commercialization Loop – for leveraging the latest advancements in AI in healthcare commercialization. Using this framework as a foundation, we’ll share our playbook for democratizing access to AI within our own organization–a critical step in realizing AI’s commercial benefits. To close out, we’ll explore how leaders can prepare their organizations to take better advantage of AI at every step.

Five Steps to Improve Commercialization in Healthcare with AI

Our goal as healthcare leaders can and should be to unleash the power of AI to make drug research more effective and increase the impact once a treatment is launched. When it comes to applying AI to healthcare commercialization, the framework we use at Real Chemistry is a five-step, continuous improvement process:

1. Listen – Optimizing execution begins with an accurate 360° view of our stakeholders and real-world evidence, the cornerstone of traditional health analytics, is just one facet of reality. Real Chemistry’s Swoop and Integrated Intelligence teams complete the picture by integrating scientific and clinical research, social determinants of health, media consumption habits, social interests and interactions, and care-related conversations. Like our work to drive rapid new start lift in a rare disease, our Real Audiences platform helps us go beyond simply summarizing what's happening to synthesize why it's happening and how we can change hearts and minds.

2. Identify – Especially when resources are limited, choosing the right audience is critical. Legacy commercial thinking weakens growth and reduces efficiency in two ways. First, it is reactive – like selecting healthcare practitioners based on the prescriptions they’ve already written instead of the patients they are about to see. Second, it is simplistic – like relying solely on demographic data to plan large TV buys instead of real-world evidence. Our experience with our clients, including our IPM.ai team’s work with AVEO Oncology, indicates that optimal audience identification, based on AI leveraging an up-to-date 360° view of reality, improves growth and profitability.

3. Personalize – Carefully personalized communication is the fastest path to behavior change. Even the next best action leaves patients and providers with a not-so-great "one size fits all" brand experience. To help forward-thinking commercial leaders go beyond their next best action and get the most out of personalization, Real Chemistry is able to apply a brand experience playbook that combines data-heavy AI automation with human-in-the-loop tailored content creation using large language models specifically tuned for our clients. And looking forward, we’re expecting AI-assisted medical, legal and regulatory reviews for commercial content to enable better personalization at scale in ways not possible today, transforming the experience for both commercial organizations and for patients.

4. Activate – Omnichannel activation is where the rubber meets the road … and where costly "accidents" that waste money happen invisibly. While direct communication with providers can be tracked and optimized well, waste is ubiquitous in advertising, especially in old-school TV buys. Most pharma commercial leaders look at media activation tactically, ignoring strategic considerations such as control, risk and incentive structures that don't align media agencies with the overall goals of commercial optimization. Real Chemistry favors an integrated view of activation based on privacy-preserving AI that works in concert with other steps in our framework, similar to our Swoop team’s work with Abbott to create simultaneous awareness of a disorder and therapy while activating patients.

5. Engage – Engagement beyond an ad or direct message is a rare opportunity to educate patients and providers. Historically, the state-of-the-art approach has been presenting personalized content and the challenge has always been the poor user experience of a brand's website. With our RepConnect solution, we’re enabling improved engagement at lower cost via AI-driven virtual experiences for patients and providers – covering conditions, diagnostics and therapies, as well as self-services, adverse event reporting and, if needed, escalation to a human sales representative or medical science liaison.

It’s “Better, Faster, More”

The clients we work with to operationalize AI are ahead of the game. They’re going to reach more patients with treatments and make a bigger impact in the disease areas in which they operate. AI and machine learning are driving a sea change in how we work with life sciences companies to help connect their life-changing treatments and interventions with patients and their physicians.

In this new era, AI has become the engine for innovative companies to maximize the impact of ideas. Fuel AI with great ideas and effectively direct its output toward meaningful goals and you can transform your results. Harnessed correctly, and at scale, AI will mean better, faster and more. More of an impact. More business value. More return on investment.

The real “why” for us here at Real Chemistry – and we believe this to be true for our clients as well – is that the true more for AI and machine learning is to give more chances for success at finding the treatment that truly makes a difference for patients.

This is the first in a series of three articles from Real Chemistry’s Chief Executive Officer, Shankar Narayanan, and Chief Technology Officer, Sim Simeonov, which share how Real Chemistry is helping its life sciences clients – and internal teams – make the best use possible of AI in a rapidly changing ecosystem. Want to get hands-on with AI and Real Chemistry? Click here to contact us.

Want to hear more? Listen to the first episode of MM+M's three-part podcast series where Shankar Narayanan and Sim Simeonov peel back the layers on the transformative effects AI can have — and is having — in healthcare.