Read More
5 Min Read
3 Creative Ways To Use AI in Medical Affairs
There was a recent Fierce Pharma article on how many pharma folks think AI is overrated. How are you feeling about all this talk about AI in Medical Affairs? Sick of it? Excited? Back when I was working on AI with MSL insights, I noticed a huge gap in people’s perception of what AI can do. At the time, many thought it would be able to pull out amazing decision-grade insights from a pile of MSL insights. They were very disappointed to learn this was (and is still) not the case. This gap still exists today and has been revived with the hype around Gen AI.
One issue is that many Medical Affairs people are thinking about AI in a limiting way. This article will help you flip how you are thinking about AI on it’s head and get you thinking about it as a creativity and productivity tool. Think of it like an assistant. At a recent DIA conference, Rich Swank mentioned his favorite quote was something like it’s not how AI going to take your job, it’s that the people smartly using AI are going to. Start thinking more broadly about AI with these 3 creative ways for Medical Affairs to use AI.
For 3 use cases on how MSLs can use AI to assist with pre-meeting planning, insights gathering, and research / competitive intelligence, download this guide:

Important Disclaimer 1: Do Not Use AI if Your Company Prohibits It Or Use The Internal Tool
Many companies do not allow the use of AI because there is a risk that proprietary company info can get leaked. Or because your company has its own AI model for you to use. It’s important to abide by your company policies. Never put proprietary info in a public AI model (like ChatGPT).
Important Disclaimer 2: AI Can and Does Make Mistakes
Also recognize that AI makes mistakes. Not everything it spits out accurate. That’s another reason you should think about how AI helping you do things, not doing your job for you. Be aware of this when using AI for various aspects of your job. You wouldn’t want to look incompetent in front of KOLs or internal stakeholders.
3 Creative Ways To Use AI In Medical Affairs
Here are 3 ways to get you to go beyond using AI to generate insights, putting literature into context, for Med Info chatbots or other use cases for Medical Affairs (all are great but there is so much more we can and should be doing!) in Medical Affairs. The goal is to get you thinking about how AI can be used to assist you in your day-to-day and make you more productive.
1. Use AI as an ideas generator
This is a great way to use AI. Especially since it can make mistakes. If you are just looking for ideas, the mistakes aren’t a problem. Here are some areas you could ask AI to help you with ideas for:
- Outlines
- Agenda items
- Other things you should be considering
My current favorite AI prompt right now is: “Give 5 more.” The AI then generates more ideas for me. Many of them miss the mark, but a lot of times there are a couple in there that I didn’t think of!
2. Use AI to get up to speed quickly
AI is amazing at summarizing things. If you have something you need to get up to speed on quickly, ask it to summarize the topic for you. This can save you mountains of time and help avoid you going down a Google rabbit hole. Although you may go down an AI rabbit hole instead 🙂🤖.
Topics can be disease state related but do not need to be limited to scientific/medical topics. Here are some examples:
- “Explain omnichannel to me like I am 5 years old.”
- “Explain HEOR in simple terms using bullet points.”
- “Explain the unmet needs in (disease state) from the perspective of an HCP.”
It’s not everything you need to know about a topic but it gets you started quickly. You can continue to converse with the AI to dig deeper into certain areas and figure out where your educational gaps are.
Note: These are not great prompts and may not give the best output. Learn what is required to write a great AI prompt in my AI Guide to Creativity & Productivity for MSLs. Download below!

3. Use AI to think about your TA/ the healthcare landscape more broadly
This one is similar to number 1, ideas generator, but in the context of understanding additional perspectives in the healthcare landscape. It’s great for strategic thinking because it helps broaden your thinking about your TA. We often get stuck in our little boxes and have a hard time thinking outside of them. The answers AI generates may not be correct and that’s ok. It’s not supposed to do your job for you. It’s supposed to help you with your job and to think more broadly. It will certainly think of something that you haven’t thought of yet.
- “Do a SWOT analysis in (TA).”
- “What are HCPs main concerns about the unmet need in (disease state)? Please put it in table format.”
- “From a competitive intelligence perspective what else should be considered?”
- “Address alternative perspectives on (insert topic).”
Don’t forget the “Give me 5 more ideas/examples/viewpoints” prompt to get more ideas!
Conclusions: 3 Creative Ways To Use AI in Medical Affairs
Many of the examples we see out there about AI in Medical Affairs are big things like developing large language models for insights or recruiting patients in clinical trials. These applications are, of course, awesome but there are so many more applications. If we just think of AI in these contexts, we are missing out on a huge opportunity in Medical Affairs. Especially on the day-to-day level and making Medical Affairs more efficient. What do you think of the ideas presented above?
Are you using AI in your day-to-day work? If yes, how so?
Download the AI Guide to Creativity & Productivity for MSLs to learn how to:
- Write good prompts
- Leverage for pre-meeting planning, insights gathering and research / competitive intelligence
Looking for other use case examples of AI in Medical Affairs?

Read Next

Why Course Correction is a Must for Stakeholder Engagement Strategy
5 Min ReadWhy Course Correction is a Must for Stakeholder Engagement StrategyViews expressed in this article are personal. Imagine you're the captain of a ship. The sea is vast, the weather unpredictable, and the destination is clear but far away. You’ve got...

MSL Omnichannel Insights: Why They Are Important and What to Focus on
Omnichannel is probably the most talked about topic right now in Medical Affairs. This was a huge focus area at the recent Medical Affairs Professional Society 2023 meeting in Nashville. There is so much buzz around omnichannel and rightfully so! Omnichannel is an...

AI Won’t Make Bad MSL Insights Better
10 Min ReadAI Won’t Make Bad MSL Insights Better: But Here's What WillAI is blowing up the MSL insights world, and rightfully so. One of the biggest pain points in the MSL insights process is analyzing large volumes of free-text insights. It can be overwhelming, slow,...
0 Comments