📝 usncan Note: Ostro Launches AI Tool For Clinicians To Engage With Pharma Companies
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The pharma industry is embracing rapid advancements in AI and digital transformation.
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Life-sciences digital engagement platform Ostro is launching an AI powered tool for healthcare providers to directly interact with pharmaceutical companies. The tool, named Airmark, will allow clinicians to respond directly to pharmaceutical emails and threads to engage in deeper conversations about products and medications.
Currently, the workflow as it exists today is much more cumbersome; pharmaceutical digital engagement often entails informational or product emails sent to clinicians without much room for conversation or deeper engagement. If a healthcare provider has a question, they have to reach out to the company or representative for a follow-up.
With Airmark, providers can respond directly to emails and the platform will engage to answer questions and interact with the provider in an automated fashion. Furthermore, the agent will continuously learn from the provider to send meaningful information, relevant answers and also understand best next steps.
Why is this important?
Communication between providers and pharmaceutical companies are overwhelmingly one-way, with the latter often engaging in blast marketing and not providing an opportunity for clinicians to engage in meaningful discussions about the medication or service.
Airmark’s goal is to improve a few fundamental levers in this arena: increase physician knowledge, engagement and understanding of therapeutics. The platform may be able to provide a positive service in this light by helping foster meaningful conversations and engagement; rather than brute-force marketing of new drugs, its aim is to provide a forum for healthcare providers to deeply understand innovative therapies to offer their patients in a more efficient manner.
Co-founders Ahmed Elsayyad and Chase Feiger started the company when they realized that the entire pharmaceutical and provider engagement landscape lacked serious modernization. Feiger explains that while nearly every other industry has taken a consumer-design-first approach (e.g., Uber and Lyft for transportation, Netflix and Hulu for entertainment, etc.), the pharmaceutical marketing space is in need of a serious facelift. This is where Elsayyad also saw a similar opportunity: rethinking how stakeholders interact and interface with pharmaceutical products.
They both also note a really important value for the company: empowering knowledge. “A physician in rural America should be able to access the same type of information and knowledge on cutting-edge therapeutics as a physician in the most prestigious academic centers in big cities.” This is the power of meaningful engagement.
Together, they have raised nearly $60 million dollars in funding from a variety of investors including Founders Fund, Greycroft, Havas, and Byers Capital.
Needless to say, the competition in this arena is stiff. There are entire agencies dedicated solely to helping pharmaceutical companies interface with their customers and stakeholders. AI has introduced a massive new layer to this field as well, with the ability to rapidly generate and distribute content.
But pharmaceutical marketing is not the same as other fields, where information can just be generated and used. There are strict regulatory and compliance requirements, and often, information has to go through stringent Medical, Legal, and Regulatory (MLR) review before it can be distributed. Ostro’s platform bypasses this piece by enabling their agent to answer questions only with pre-loaded information; it does not “generate” novel responses like other generative AI solutions.
Nevertheless, the heavy competition is a welcome change to the industry. In fact, the promise of rapid innovation, as above, indicates that the pharmaceutical industry is finally undertaking a commitment to modernization. Ultimately, with more competition comes more innovation; and with more innovation, patients ultimately stand to benefit.
