After the anti-corruption campaign in the medical industry, it is basically impossible for medical representatives to treat doctors to meals or visit departments. Pharmaceutical companies are looking for new entrances, and now they have found AI.
Here’s how it works: Alibaba Health and JD Health have both built AI medical assistants for doctors. Doctors will use it to check medicines and ask about diagnosis and treatment plans. Pharmaceutical companies hope to include clinical research evidence of their own products when AI answers these questions.
Wang Xiangzhi, chief technology officer of Alibaba Health, has publicly stated that pharmaceutical companies do have this demand. Alibaba Health’s own survey shows that 93% of the doctors surveyed are already using this type of AI tool.
The market size is not small either. Consulting firm Frost & Sullivan estimates that China’s digital health marketing spending will reach 274.4 billion yuan by 2030.
Pharmaceutical companies say: This model is compliant and provides clinical support to doctors, which is much better than relying on meals and gifts before.
This is half true. It is indeed cleaner to push real research data in front of doctors than stuffing red envelopes. The other half of the problem is that when doctors ask AI questions, they get neutral answers by default. If the evidence for a certain drug is shown first and the evidence for a competing product is not treated equally, then it is advertising, just in a shell that is harder to identify.
Search engines went through exactly the same path back then, and later regulations required that bidding results must be marked as "advertising." There are currently no rules on how sponsored content in AI medical assistants should be labeled. Before the rules come out, doctors would be wise to ask one more question about the "preferred medication" recommended by AI: Are there any other options?