The New Era of Agentic AI in the Physician–Industry Relationship

«The medical visit is dying. But not because of the industry. Nor the doctors. It’s dying because the future no longer has time to wait for the past.»

For decades, the medical visit has been the cornerstone of the connection between pharmaceutical science and clinical practice. A simple gesture: a representative arrives at the office, with a folder in hand, a rehearsed smile, and a key message between their eyebrows. On the other side, a doctor — hopefully not rushing — listens, questions, or simply nods.

That scene built empires. Sold millions of units. Changed clinical practices. Shaped therapeutic culture.

But it no longer works.

The system is collapsing under impossible schedules, overwhelmed doctors, informed patients, and representatives with less room to maneuver than ever. The medical visit we once knew — personal, relational, sequential — can no longer scale in a world where algorithms generate more trust than human arguments.

And just as the model seemed to fade into extinction, agentic AI emerges as a catalyst and replacement. Not as an assistant. Not as a chatbot. But as a new type of clinical interlocutor with autonomy, context, narrative, and real-time medical synthesis.

This is not science fiction. It is already happening. And if we don’t design this new interaction model ourselves, someone else will — and with it, we lose the chance to build a truly human and technologically advanced medicine.

This is a call to those who have lived the medical visit from both sides of the desk. To those who believe that technology can be an ally, but never a replacement for empathy. If we — who know the system, both its light and its shadows — don’t lead this redesign, others will… and it may be too late to rewrite the script.

Autopsy of the Traditional Medical Visit

The traditional medical visit died silently. Not a sudden collapse, but a prolonged agony, masked by protocols, regulatory changes, endless slides, and coffee in crowded waiting rooms. For years we tried to resuscitate it: with CRMs, digital materials, more metrics. But the real heartbeat — the human connection with scientific purpose — gradually weakened until no one dared to sign the death certificate.

Vital signs before the collapse:

• Operational Tachycardia: the required number of visits per week skyrocketed. The model shifted from depth to volume. CRM checkboxes were prioritized over actual impact on medical practice. Activity was confused with relevance, presence with influence.
• Clinical Hypoxia: doctors stopped receiving truly useful information. What was once scientific exchange became a recital of thinly veiled promotional messages. When discourse is generic, doctors disconnect. Rightfully so.
• Narrative Malnutrition: the clinical story of the doctor as an individual interlocutor disappeared. Personalization was lost. Conversation became monologue. The relational strategy was replaced by Excel segmentations that treated professionals like statistically productive units.
• Relational Anemia: constant turnover among representatives broke trust. Doctors were no longer visited by a familiar advisor, but a new face each quarter — with manufactured enthusiasm and no understanding of their history, needs, or patients.
• Digital Delirium: the arrival of multichannel materials created the illusion that “engagement” could replace conversation. But a banner on an iPad, shown from a hallway to a busy doctor, doesn’t replace an intelligently answered question. There’s no click rate that compensates for the absence of clinically intentional conversation. Misunderstood digitalization only dressed up a model that no longer created value.

Metrics That Simulate Life

The paradox of the current model is that even in death, it continues to be audited as if alive. Many pharmaceutical companies still evaluate field teams using outdated, empty metrics that no longer align with clinical reality.

Forced role plays are required, with fictitious visit scripts that ignore the context of the country, the doctor, and the patient. These theatrical simulations fail to reflect the complexity of today’s clinical conversations.

Even worse: indicators such as the number of physical prescriptions per doctor are still used as gold standards — despite widespread adoption of electronic prescriptions, making physical evidence of medical decisions increasingly rare. The result? Market share is attributed based on traces that no longer reflect real prescribing behavior.

Market intelligence reports and prescription monitoring tools — once useful — now have serious limitations in terms of representativeness, local granularity, and compatibility with today’s digital health models.

Add to this outdated CRM systems that count interactions without evaluating their depth, clinical impact, or educational value. “Contact” is confused with “influence”, “activity” with “value”, and “presence” with “relevance”.

Innovation is impossible when we continue rewarding empty visits and meaningless clicks instead of knowledge, ethics, and influence.

Even the most advanced technology becomes useless when KPIs measure what no longer matters.

The Medical Visit of the Future

If the traditional medical visit is dead, it’s not enough to bury it. We must design its successor.

Because the relationship between pharma and healthcare professionals must not disappear. In fact, it’s more necessary than ever: the volume of medical information doubles every 73 days — according to multiple clinical and academic sources — and a model based on a single face-to-face interaction is now functionally obsolete.

But what must disappear is the notion that visiting a doctor means repeating a script, handing over a folder, and measuring success by visit counts.

The medical visit of the future isn’t a “visit”. It’s a continuous value experience — personalized, ethical, and technologically enhanced. And it doesn’t occur through a single channel, nor is it executed by a single figure.

Protocols for a New Era in Pharma

Measure What Matters

First, abandon inherited metrics that reward volume over impact. Counting physical visits without asking what changed in the doctor’s practice is a sterile strategy. Companies must stop obsessing over the number of interactions and start valuing their quality, depth, and relevance.

New metrics should include:

• Perceived usefulness by the physician (qualitative surveys, feedback forms).
• Degree of clinical application of shared knowledge.
• New questions the interaction triggered (as a sign of activated critical thinking).
• Continuity of dialogue: if conversation continues beyond the contact point, something is working.

It’s not about measuring more. It’s about measuring better.

Redefine Field Team Roles

In the new paradigm, the sales rep is not a message deliverer — they are a strategic consultant. Their role is to read contexts, identify real clinical needs, propose adapted solutions, and activate resources that generate value.

MSLs must evolve. Knowing papers is not enough. They must master ethical, intelligent use of agentic AI, understand how the system interacts with doctors, and translate that into meaningful scientific dialogue. In short, they become facilitators of human–AI dialogue.

This requires deep training — and above all, a mindset shift.

Professionalize Agentic AI

Deploying agentic AI in the physician–industry relationship cannot be a casual experiment. Every AI interacting with a healthcare professional must be trained on clinically validated content, structured by therapeutic relevance, and audited by experts in evidence-based medicine.

It must also have a clear identity and behavior norms. Doctors have the right to know if they are speaking to an AI, what to expect from it, and its level of autonomy or personalization. Agentic AI requires a functional biography, programmed ethical limits, and escalation protocols to humans.

Without that, it’s not an ally — it’s a risk.

Build Integrated Experiences

One of pharma’s common digital transformation failures is fragmentation. Multiple channels — email, WhatsApp, portals, webinars — don’t talk to each other. Doctors feel like they’re engaging with unrelated entities, lacking coherence or memory.

The ideal experience is that of an ecosystem where AI and humans share a common language, narrative, and relational history. This requires building a memory across all points of contact.

Designing value journeys means moving away from the funnel logic and embracing continuous clinical support.

Reframe Ethical Strategy

Every innovation in the physician–industry relationship must be governed by respect for clinical autonomy. AI must never be a tool of subtle manipulation or strategic pressure — it must be a genuine support to decision-making.

This includes reviewing how information is presented and the internal incentives that push teams to force empty interactions or chase KPIs disconnected from real impact.

An ethical company doesn’t just declare values — it aligns metrics with its purpose.

Align with Legal and Regulatory Frameworks

Innovation must comply with country-specific regulations. Using AI in physician interactions requires reviewing laws on promotion, data privacy, and legal responsibility. Companies must work closely with compliance teams to ensure that every tool is approved by ethics, legal, and regulatory committees.

This isn’t about deregulation. It’s about creating a new, regulated ethics — where legal and clinical considerations reinforce each other.

Link to Business Results

This shift is not only ethical and technological — it’s smart business. It optimizes resources, improves targeting, strengthens medical loyalty, and reduces the burnout of outdated models.

The representative of the future costs less, influences more, and builds longer-lasting relationships.

Put the Patient at the Center

Redesigning the medical visit isn’t just a doctor–industry issue. It’s a chance to improve access, understanding, and treatment adherence. Every interaction that improves medical communication indirectly benefits the patient.

A truly modern medical visit is one that — even if the patient isn’t mentioned — exists for their benefit.

Next Steps: From Critique to Change

1. Create redesign taskforces within each company: cross-functional teams including AI experts, doctors, reps, MSLs, and compliance.
2. Launch hybrid interaction pilots: AI + human models, with direct physician feedback.
3. Retrain teams on new competencies: active listening, contextual navigation, augmented ethics.
4. Redesign KPIs based on clinical outcomes and perceived impact.
5. Draft company-specific transformation blueprints: tailored to culture, regulations, and capacity.

This is not a replacement. It’s an evolution. And every company has the right — and the responsibility — to decide if it will be a protagonist or a spectator.

Agentic AI A term derived from “agency,” describing artificial intelligence capable of acting with some level of autonomy, interpreting context, making decisions, adapting to users, and executing tasks toward defined goals. Different from reactive/passive systems, it demonstrates functional intentionality and dynamic interaction. Equivalent to the term “Agentic AI.”

References

Densen, P. (2011). Challenges and Opportunities Facing Medical Education. Transactions of the American Clinical and Climatological Association, 122, 48–58. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3116346/