Pew Research released a substantial report last week on how Americans get health information from influencers. The numbers may be higher than you're expecting (unless you already use influencers).

The report is based on surveys of 5,023 and 5,111 Pew panelists in June and October, respectively. 

It's not surprising that influencer audiences skew younger, especially for health, but the older generations still get some information from the channel.

This list isn't mutually-exclusive and many creators will use multiple platforms. Here we see Instagram in the lead with 86% of the audience while TikTok comes in second with 62%. VOD platform YouTube comes in third with just under half of the audience.

If the creators are on these platforms it's a safe bet that the audiences are as well.

Topics that pharma marketers care about are being discussed by influencers ... along with less welcome topics such as alternative medicine.

When asked how much of the health information they see is trustworthy, most say "some."

Trust falls off in the 65+ group but from 18 to 64 it's relatively stable. If the content is credible and well-sourced creators can have an impact with American audiences.

The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) conducts short polls every couple of weeks and presents their findings as LinkedIn infographics. Some of the latest stats:

Over the past year one-third of medical practices have had one or more doctors leave because of burnout.

Each payor has its own portal and they are all different. Staff at clinical groups have to deal with many and keep them all straight. 

When it comes to AI in groups, a robust group is using the technology to help with revenue tasks such as coding services.

When asked about their "top AI/automation focus for front office/access" patient services rose to the top. They surpassed PA management, but this was a single-answer question so Groups are certainly enabling multiple uses.

These are just four charts of many on the MGMA site.

A new article in Science from the AAAS compared OpenAI's then-new o1 preview model to GPT 4. Nailing down the date of these tests is difficult but consider that o1-preview was active between September and December of 2024 and that is the likely time of the testing.

When presented with a case and then asked what to do next, o1-preview performed better than HCPs or even HCPs with GPT 4.

The physician columns have many more samples because they had 46 physicians handling the multiple cases. o1-preview only ran three times.

Obviously we can't and won't swap out HCPs with AI algorithms, but as a second opinion these systems could be useful. Also, this study was from 2024, we imagine current models would be even stronger.

MasterControl sponsored a study of 300 global Quality and Manufacturing leaders in life sciences to find out how AI is changing their work.

The main finding is that AI systems are meeting or exceeding expectations:

However, not all is rosy in pharma-land. Employees aren't following quality systems.

A new study in JAMA has the classic academic data delay... it reports on years from 2022 to 2024. It is likely that nothing in the past two years has changed this trend but the data is still old.

This is the right trend. However, these numbers are radically lower than others we have seen from Doximity in 2023 so we wonder about the differences in study design.

The way to keep doctors in their positions is pretty clear; three of the top four desires are for better efficiency in admin overhead.

A report from Microsoft and based on 20,000 knowledge workers who use AI at work across 10 markets between February 18, 2026, and April 7, 2026. 

Unsurprisingly the intelligence tool helps with ... intelligence. "Cognitive work" was the top use by AI-using employees.

The spread of usage is found across all industries, with more or fewer prompts per user (the size of the circles). Health is right in the middle with room to grow.

One of the main points of the paper is that organizations hold the keys to AI usage and best outcomes are found when strong leadership matches employee engagement.

Pharma retains its top spot in traditional TV spend, and the gap isn't small, $1.5 billion more than CPG, according to The VAB. 

The report also includes the top eight brands by spend of a total 186 in the database. They likely won't surprise Wire readers.

Social Insider has a new report on TikTok benchmarks... but they are for consumer brands, not Pharma. Don't use these numbers for your TikTok campaigns.

This was the only place researchers found any retraction year-over-year and it was for smaller accounts. The largest accounts (100K+ followers) got a 39% increase in views.

The lowest-effort engagement is the like. This follows the same overall trend as views.

When users are inspired to share a TikTok on their feed that is the highest endorsement (assuming it's positive). Here we again see values scaling with followers, of course.

We caution that pharma won't see these numbers because they are more representative of consumer brands such as GoPro or Nike. On the high end of pharma, NurtecODT has views in the hundreds even though they have over 300K followers.

Adobe surveyed 3,000 global executives and practitioners and 4,000 customers to find out how businesses and customers view AI. Here we present three findings but you can of course see the full story at Adobe.com.

Content is the top two most improved aspects of business according to combined executives and practitioners. 

For this chart Adobe split out executives from practitioners. Most of the goals for AI are reasonably aligned even if executives are a bit more enthusiastic. Content, something executives aren't generally engaged in, is the one substantial difference.

The prompt-reply method of using generative AI has been the prevalent model since November 2022 when OpenAI launched ChatGPT. This conversational model is primed to be usurped by agentic management but companies' investments have not yet caught up. 

The data in this report is 6 months old but is still relevant for researchers looking at companies' approaches to AI.

This chart represents hours of effort in a meta analysis of "55 experiments, patents, and case studies." It looks at those sources and consolidates a ranking of importance of factors for GEO.

The top six factors show the similarity and differences between SEO and GEO. URLs are important as are SEO results but content format is also critical.

Some Advertiser Perceptions data made its way into a Cumulus audio-oriented deck. This chart shows how many marketers are using programmatic to buy audio placements. 

Only 46% are likely to use programmatic audio, but 82% do use it... there must have been some odd wording in those questions.

If you want to know what your peers are thinking about Emarketer has you covered. This chart shows that GenAI is top-of-mind, of course, but is closely followed by streaming TV and social video.