Introduction

The pharma industry faces a critical challenge in 2025: the rapid generational shift among healthcare professionals (HCPs) is rendering traditional engagement models obsolete. This demographic transformation, accelerated by COVID-19, requires companies to fundamentally rethink their commercial approach.

The Generational Shift

Jens Ollgaard, Head of Customer Experience and Commercial Excellence at Novo Nordisk Denmark, identifies a profound change in the HCP landscape. Data from Denmark— mirrored across Europe—shows Generation Y (born 1981-1996) has become the dominant demographic among physicians, while Baby Boomers rapidly retire. "From 2019 to 2022, you saw the emergence of the Generation Y in doctors' offices all around. And at the same time, the Baby Boomer generation was retiring," explains Ollgaard.

"Our customer engagement model is suited for the Baby Boomers, but it's not a slam dunk to engage Generation Y."

This shift coincides with a doubling in the proportion of female doctors over the past 15 years. "Now our main customer is the Generation Y female," notes Ollgaard, highlighting that pharmaceutical companies must adapt to this new reality.

Understanding the Modern HCP

A fundamental misunderstanding persists in pharma's approach to HCPs. "Doctors are human beings," Ollgaard emphasizes. "Doctors are making decisions in the exact same way as any other human being and customer across industries and businesses."

The industry often mistakenly assumes physicians are purely rational and data-driven. "In pharma, we have a tendency to think of all doctors as behaving as KOLs when they are in an advisory board or conference where they are 90% data-driven. But they're not. They are also squeezed on time and attention."

This shift coincides with a doubling in the proportion of female doctors over the past 15 years. "Now our main customer is the Generation Y female," notes Ollgaard, highlighting that pharmaceutical companies must adapt to this new reality.

Effective Engagement Strategies

Ollgaard advocates for a radical shift in content strategy, suggesting pharmaceutical companies should be "more like TikTok" than Netflix. The advantages include:

·      Super-short content that respects time constraints

·      Communication at eye level, reducing perceived distance between sender and receiver

·      Higher engagement and credibility

Data from Novo Nordisk Denmark's marketing campaigns demonstrates this approach's effectiveness. Short, native-style videos outperformed traditional corporate content by 4-5 times on metrics like click rates and cost-per-click.

"The short video, which fun fact was by far the cheapest to produce, has four to five times the performance," Ollgaard reveals. "You should really dare to go 'native' when producing content. It's also much cheaper and much easier to handle."

Content Targeting and Relevance

Analysis of email marketing campaigns shows a clear pattern: targeted, specific content significantly outperforms generic messaging. The best-performing communications were aimed at specific segments, such as "primary care nurses with limited experience," with tailored educational content.

"What doesn't work: large, unspecific, generic branded messages. Forget about it, they will just unsubscribe to your emails," warns Ollgaard.

The Outdated Business Model

Ollgaard concludes with a powerful analogy, comparing pharma's traditional engagement model to opening a physical retail store in the digital age—an outdated approach that no business leader would choose today.

"Why are you running your pharmaceutical business the exact same way? We've been doing it the same way since forever," he challenges. "What we should be doing is delivering blockbuster drugs, not having a blockbuster downfall."

Key Takeaways:

1.        "Different generations need different engagements" - The industry must adapt its approach to connect with Generation Y and prepare for Generation Z.

2.        Generation Y females now represent the largest HCP segment and have "completely different needs and preferences than previous generations."

3.        Short-form, authentic video content outperforms traditional corporate communications by 4-5x while costing significantly less to produce.

4.        Targeted, specific educational content achieves dramatically higher engagement than generic branded messaging.

5.        "Dare to go unbranded, use native content over corporate" - Moving away from rigid corporate visual identity standards can significantly improve engagement.

In order to get you the highlights of Pharma 25 faster, we are using generative AI technology to summarise the transcripts of the sessions.  If you have any feedback about the summary please contact lucy.fisher@thomsonreuters.com.

"We created this genius support bar prompting for field teams that prompted them on what to focus on, what to say, how to make personalized outreach based upon live realtime data," DeYoung explained. "This moved them away from manual territory planning or static NBA models and really into dynamic insight-to-impact guidance."

The results were compelling—effectively giving each field team member their own dedicated sales operations support that never sleeps. This approach broke through data silos while delivering more relevant customer engagement.

Similarly, Teva Pharmaceuticals implemented an AI solution addressing a specific revenue challenge. "We identified a problem—we were missing sales revenue with our pharmacy sales force between sales visits," Fenoglio shared. "Our expert data science team looked at historical transaction data and lookalike data from pharmacists with similar profiles to create an AI model that produced personalized recommendations for upselling and cross-selling."

Accelerating Innovation Cycles

For technology providers, AI is transforming product development itself. Joe Ferraro, VP Product for Life Sciences Cloud at Salesforce, described how AI tools accelerate the innovation process.

"We're able to have a conversation on a Monday about an idea—maybe an autonomous AI agent for an MSL—and turn something around in days using prompt engineering to build rapid prototypes," Ferraro said. "That feedback loop is faster and faster. We're getting to value and ultimately products that solve real business problems more quickly."

This acceleration is yielding tangible results: "We're able to deliver about 20% more in initial releases than we initially anticipated just due to being an AI-powered product organization."

From Generative to Agentic AI

A significant paradigm shift is underway as organizations move from generative AI to more sophisticated agentic AI. While generative AI focuses on content creation and information retrieval, agentic AI represents a fundamental evolution.

"When you look at innovation as a framework, first step is digitization, then modernization, then transformation," DeYoung explained. "Where GenAI was about data and questions and prompt engineering, agentic AI will be about flow engineering and a very different cognitive architecture."

This evolution enables AI to act, not just inform—transforming entire workflows rather than simply augmenting individual tasks.

Implementation Challenges

Despite enthusiasm, significant challenges remain. Panelists highlighted three primary obstacles: data integration, governance frameworks, and workforce readiness.

"If you don't have your data foundation in place, it's going to go much slower," cautioned Fenoglio. "You're having to first build the structured data in one place and then add AI on top."

Governance presents another critical consideration. "You need to partner with compliance, legal, and IT on golden rules," Fenoglio advised. "You need to set in place governance to inspire innovation and experimentation with your employees but also minimize risk."

Perhaps most crucially, success depends on human factors.

 "It's all about people. That's our biggest barrier to success and our key to success," Fenoglio emphasized. "You have to surround the entire program with culture and capability to change mindsets and behaviors."

Sustainable Implementation Strategies

As organizations look to embed AI sustainability in their strategy, panelists offered clear guidance: "Start now. If you haven't started now, you're already behind," urged Fenoglio. "As leaders, we need to role model the behavior and encourage experimentation and innovation in our teams, create psychological safety, make sure teams can experiment in a safe way to minimize risk."

Ferraro emphasized the importance of measurable outcomes: "You need to be really thoughtful about the challenges you're taking on and ultimately tie it back to business value first. Then make these things measurable."

DeYoung stressed the foundational importance of data infrastructure: "AI requires modern interoperable, real-time, trusted data to be able to move from isolated insights to enterprise value. We need to move from custodians of data to connectors of data so data sets can flow across functions and departments."

Key takeaways:

·      Scale beyond pilots: Most GenAI strategies lack cross-unit integration and transformative impact.

·      Focus on business problems: Target specific challenges where AI delivers measurable value.

·      Prepare for agentic AI: It will reduce operational friction, enhancing agility and personalization.

·      Fix data foundations: Modern, interoperable data systems are essential for enterprise-wide AI value.

·      Build human capabilities: Surround technology with culture that changes mindsets and behaviours.

In order to get you the highlights of Pharma EU faster, we are using generative AI technology to summarise the transcripts of the sessions. If you have any feedback about the summary and the post-event report, please contact lucy.fisher@thomsonreuters.com. 

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