According to the folks at McKinsey half of physicians' tasks can already be handled by AI and 53% of social workers'.

The authors don't seem to understand what these numbers say to hospital admins, however. They seem to think that the extra bandwidth will be given over to quality while admins have already stated they will want higher quantity.

Meanwhile, the number of employees in each area is important for total potential savings.

Ahrefs conducted research with 232.8 million queries, 92.5 million of which were branded. The research looked at how many resulted in AI overviews on Google. 

73% of the branded queries ended up with AI overviews, a narrowing gap with the 78.3% of non-brand queries. 

These numbers are a huge increase over the 2025 ones where branded were only 13.1% of searches. 

We did a completely non-scientific test of searching for four popular drugs and got AI overviews for all four of them. Don't bother squinting, we blurred out the names.

Not only that, but the brand.com or brandhcp.com websites were cited in all four results. We marked them with the red arrows.

A new report from the PHTI looks at how health plans (n=106), employers (n=115), and health systems (n=100) use digital health tools for their patient populations. 

When looking at what conditions get the attention of digital health producers and buyers, it's the usual suspects in family practice.

Hospital systems use AI in their digital health tools first to try and help HCPs with note taking. Next, however, is trying to engage patients in their systems.

Last on the list for providers is PA documentation. Health insurers don't have PA in their list at all, but if you look at the AI uses many of them have to do with dealing with PAs (markings by us, not in the PHTI report).

For a lot more detail on how the US health system is using digital health take a look at this data-first 37-page report.

A new report from Bain looks at the priorities of US healthcare providers and payers. Revenue cycle management (RCM) is the top priority for providers who run at single digit margins which can easily turn negative. 

Interestingly, when asked about EHR technology and AI solutions, providers showed a preference for best-in-class point solutions in governance and ERP solutions. In other areas they leaned towards the built-in EHR solution if it was remotely comparable. This has been shown before with Epic.

Payers, on the other hand, are using AI to help with customer support and call centers. With all the news about prior authorization denials you might think it would be at the top of the list but it's rather lower down.

Meltwater has released its LLM leaderboard for August, 2026. The thing we like about the company's methodology is that it combines all the major LLM platforms with the ubiquitous Google AI Overviews and AI Mode.

LinkedIn has moved into the top three in this chart and five of the top 10 citation sources are platforms that brands can influence. Also, note that NIH is number four on the list even though the "thousands of prompts" used for the test are not healthcare-specific.

Looking at the top citation sources for the different platforms shows NIH's position. Likely, this is reflecting a concentration of health sources to these trusted sites. Meanwhile, Google is strongly preferring it's Alphabet sibling, YouTube.

Kantar has a small report out on 2027 planning. It looks at how global consumers are operating in the current digital landscape. Turns out, they're using AI in large numbers.

When asked specifically about advertising, consumers in 2026 are somewhat better with it than "previously."

It's not news to Wire readers that pharma and healthcare have to be careful about how they track and target people with their advertising. One wrong pixel and you can end up in the FTC's crosshairs. 

The document contains more details on data resellers and other industry topics but those are the most important for pharma marketers.

Most Wire readers will be up to speed on this already but if you need a refresher or a good "sendalong" to your favorite policy wonk the 8-page PDF is a good read.

A report on social listening by technology provider Pulsar looks at the Peptide craze. I admit I had to look up what a Peptide is when reviewing this data...

GLP-1 drugs are peptides and likely kicked off this movement but the pharma companies that made them don't get credit. They have volume but much of it is controversy rather than positivity. 

Harris Poll has published a beautiful, thought-provoking piece based on its latest US research on consumers' thoughts on AI.

It's nuanced.

Protesting AI generally means you know about it, and that generally means the protestor also uses AI.

When talking about services, it's the outcomes that get a positive reaction, not the AI that powers them. Also, Creators are accepted more than Influencers.

These ones show the same thing, but are more polarized.

When asked how they research brands Gen Z and Millennials (15 to 45 year-olds) first said search, of course. But social platforms and AI featured prominently as well. And when asked how they use AI, 69% said "for utility."

These few insights don't do justice to this report which uses a modern 'zine style. It really is worth a look, even if it's just for inspiration for your next deck.

A survey from Express Pros (conducted by the Harris Poll) showed that 90% of US employers want AI skills and 54% say those skills very important or critical.

When rating their own AI skills as advanced or expert, employees top out just above half.

Search engine optimization experts are all in on GEO for 2027 according to a new report from Search Engine Journal. The report is based on a survey of 166 search experts from SEJ's audience.

Marketers are seeing their search results degrade as zero-click AI searches suppress referral traffic. Those most affected are doubling down on increasing their SEO investments.

Read the above as those "44% of significantly negatively affected by AI zero-click results are increasing SEO budgets."

Some tactics are retaining their positions such as original content generation but many new tactics are planned to increase for next year.

That heading isn't exactly true, there are GEO tactics that are distinct from SEO. That said, the top GEO tactics below definitely have their roots in classic SEO.

This is a 31-page, dense report on SEO for 2027 and anyone with that focus should definitely take a look.

We often see numbers of AI usage higher than this, but they are typically localized to first world nations. This number is across 48 countries.

Agent usage is lower, but still a respectable 25% at weekly+.