This report needs attention at the highest levels in our societies. Doximity surveyed 23,000 full-time US physicians across 2025, combined with over 250,000 completions over the past seven years. Yes, this data is US-centric but other jurisdictions may want to heed its results.

The physician shortage may be about to get exponentially worse. Almost half of Doximity's respondents say they are considering early retirement and 82% say they are dealing with overwork.

How has your clinical workload altered your career plans?

This one is a bit of a head-scratcher. US Physicians are overworked to the point that 66% are considering a job change but actual "burnout" is reducing year-over-year.

Which of the following have you personally experienced as a result of the physician shortage?

In almost all of the criteria in the Doximity survey, physicians are doing better than they have since 2024. This difference from the previous chart is likely a side effect of the more general "personally experienced" wording compared to the specific "clinical workload."

Even the end-of-career physicians in their 70's, who likely love their work and are doing it for the satisfaction it gives, are using AI. Though the perception that it saves time diminishes with age (as does usage).

AI is supposed to increase workers' productivity, at least that's what the investors are banking on. KLAS was featured in Wire issue 727 in August saying that provider executives want higher throughput from AI. Added workload expectations from AI workflow improvements could completely undermine the benefits of the technology.

Have you faced higher or lower expectations for productivity because of AI?

This report from Doximity has many more insights, especially relating to its main topic, compensation. For anyone marketing to HCPs in the US this report is a must-read. While the report itself is a web page and not a PDF we will still give it the slightly-misnamed-but-directionally-correct "must download" award.

A new report from BioPharma Dive looks at the interplay of Marketing and Sales in pharma companies. The data for this report was gathered from 151 pharma execs in February and March. 

This report asks marketing and sales teams what they want from one another. The results aren't that surprising in retrospect.

Marketing Wants

Sales Wants

Interestingly, when executives are asked about the failings in both Marketing and Sales initiatives the top answers focus on data.

Marketing Issues

Sales Issues

When asked about the importance of different success factors it seems that the respondents basically said "everything is important." This makes the data less valuable and highlights the value of limiting responses in surveys. Also, however, this report has few options shown for each question so that is also an issue. 

Complaining aside, the success factors were:

Survey results released by the Physicians Foundation August 31 look at medical misinformation in 2026. The survey was of more than 1,000 US physicians conducted with Medscape.

On the surface this isn't a great story for social media, it is cited by 85% of physicians as "often or very often" contributing to patient misinformation. But if we misquote uncle Ben, "behind great responsibility is great power."

AI chatbots are only at 33%, perhaps because they aren't used by as many patients. News coverage is surprisingly high at 58%.

Technically, 74% say they don't have the tools or support to fight misinformation but the heading is at least close. Three data points were compared from the 2025 survey and all three of them increased.

For a snapshot of how US physicians are dealing with misinformation and skepticism in 2026 see the report.

Metricool released a report based on its analysis of 6,177,375 short-form videos across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. We took the data to find the "winners" for each channel size based on followers.

It was a clean sweep for TikTok when it came to video views, no matter the channel size. 

Instagram started giving TikTok a run for its money on likes but it still came out on top.

This one is a clean sweep for Instagram and it's not even close. The share functionality is way more integrated into Instagram than the other two.

We still rate this one as a clean sweep for Instagram even though the smallest accounts had the same numbers for it and TikTok when rounded. Technically, the numbers are 6.03 to 6.01

The final tally is:

It is still planning season so reach out if you need the high res versions of these or the raw data.

The Business Group for Health advocates for employers who contribute to their employees' health plans. They ran a survey of 127 employers that span 11 million covered lives.

This chart shows that respondents chronically under-estimated the increases in healthcare costs. New data shows overall cost estimates of 9.2% and pharmacy estimates of 12.0%.

The conditions driving these increases haven't changed much over the years, accoring to the authors.

For shopping recommendations family and friends are still at the top of the trust list. However, doctors and vets are next in line. This is presumably for CPG as opposed to Rx products.

Keen surveyed 120 marketers with a 50/50 split of brand vs. agency. They wanted to know how marketers are approaching media spend and measurement in 2026.

Ever the optimists, marketers foresee budgets rising. When making these spend decisions, they want fast turnaround of metrics.

The measurement methodologies of Marketing mix modeling (MMM) and Multi-touch attribution (MTA) make up 57.5% of budget allocation. The metrics that are looked at with distain are:

Nearly all marketers are using AI in their media measurement and the spread of usage is substantial. That said, we wish they offered an "other" category because the three listed are only a subset of what is available.

Instagram added a label to identify AI creators in May but last week updated that label to be "Digital creator • AI-generated profile." 

Virtual influencers were in the news in 2024 but they haven't gone away, they've just gone quiet*. You can see some historical Wire stories here:

* That reads like an LLM but I assure you a human wrote it (don't apologize for your writing style -Ed.).

The AI Impact team surveyed its readership (AI enthusiasts) and found that Claude surpassed ChatGPT in popularity.

A study conducted at the UofT and published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association shows how much time can be saved when physicians use AI scribes. The release for the paper says 69% reduction in documentation time (from 329 seconds without AI to 100 with) but we added in the other time spent and got a solid 50%.

Regardless of how you look at it, the difference is substantial. One of the authors, LaShawn Murray (MIE PhD Candidate), highlighted:

OpenAI has announced that Epic EHR and Healthcare Public Data are now available in its ChatGPT for Healthcare product. An interesting element of this integration is that Epic is being positioned as something to be accessed from ChatGPT as well as the other way around. This is a philosophical change for the industry-leading EHR.

The two modes are described by OpenAI as:

Will this "ChatGPT first" mode prove useful for HCPs? Hard to say. Epic will be working to ensure that access via its interface is more performant for its client base.

Time on the smartphone is a nearly universal pain point. Only Americans 65 and above have a majority who are happy with their use.

When it comes to how these devices disrupt our daily lives, sleep and productivity top the list.

In all cases the younger you are, the more the smartphone is a problem. Read the full article for more investigation into the age differences.