New data from Graphite is based on a survey of 225 experienced physicians (5+ years in practice) across three countries (US, UK, Germany). It focuses on how HCPs interact with pharma companies, patients, and (of course) AI.

The top three reasons for HCPs to engage pharma companies digitally will be familiar to marketers. We have sorted these by combining "Sometimes" with "Often + Very Often" because target physicians will only engage when they need something. You're not on the daily reading list, sorry.

This data was actually gathered with the question "When being contacted by pharma companies for product information and support, which channels do you tend to avoid?"

* Obviously the inverse of "avoid" is not the same as "engage" so think of this as the least-hated ways of engaging with pharma rather than most-preferred (though it looks pretty similar).

This chart contains two critical findings for pharma marketers regarding digital patient marketing. 

The full data from the report is below with "sometimes" or more often totaled in the circles:

The second most common use of AI is for internal admin tasks, but the first and third involve some level of information gathering (literature and Rx recommendations). This really highlights why GEO is so important for pharma digital properties.

The full report from Graphite has the full breakdown of items we combined (i.e. often and very often) as well as the full question and answer pairs (we shortened the categories for space).

The Kaiser Family Foundation released a report based on surveys fielded in January "Who the Public Trusts For Health Information." It is part of their ongoing series "Trusted Sources of Health Information."

When looking at trust compared to government institutions there is no contest, the family doctor is the source of truth for most Americans.

When looking at age groups, the older folks trust their doctors completely but even the younger generations are all over 80%.

And across the other demographic groups the variance is even lower. 

This website is in German and we accessed it with machine translation to English. Bitkom surveyed 1,145 people in Germany aged 16 and over to find out their opinions about digital information and health.

Health information isn't like the weather, most people don't look it up every day. For Germans, almost three-quarters do use the internet for health information.

While many Germans use the internet (read: search) for health, fewer use LLM chatbots. Nearly half do but nearly half don't.

When asked about benefits of AI in healthcare patients look at it as a "second opinion" under human supervision. When asked about specific uses they are most positive about HCP use of the technology.

Additionally, when asked how AI should be used in the medical system, again Germans were relatively enthusiastic, possibly because 81% believe the German healthcare system is not sustainable without digitalization.

When asked how AI should be used in the medical system, Germans said:

Other selected digital health findings from the Bitkom survey include:

That is a lot of information about Germans' opinions about AI in health. Surprisingly, there is even more data in the Bitkom study as it tries to spin the story toward the risks of digital health information. If EMEA is your region, or even if you want a comparison with American data, check out the full report.

Dot Digital analyzed 10s of billions of messages from their customer accounts, anonymized of course, to get general insights for emails and messages. Because they had so much data they were able to pull out numbers for 41 discrete industries, including pharma.

Looking at the three health-related industries (and marketing for our agency subscribers) we see pharma & biotech well ahead.

Pharma gets a double-whammy as it leads in click-through rates as well.

The SMS data isn't split by industry, likely because it's much lower volume than email. However, it is split by region and here we see that the Americas are growing rapidly in SMS usage year-over-year.

For "click" through rates (really tap-through) it's APAC that wins with much more mobile-oriented populations. Also, note that growth is not volume so we expect that SMS volumes there dwarf the Americas.

If your numbers don't match these from Dot Digital don't fret, they vary greatly by email type (transactional vs. unsolicited) and audience ... so always look to your own numbers as your brand's benchmark.

Researchers surveyed 2,268 US patients with six scenarios. For each scenario they asked them which mode of healthcare support they would choose:

The wording in the study was "your doctor" but we assumed it would be interpreted as the GP. These wait times seem excessive but may have been extended to force a choice by the respondents.

In any event, patients preferred the combination of speed and familiarity every time. When there are new or worsening symptoms the urgency is higher, but even then there is a preference for the context that the family physician has even digitally.

First the controversial take from MiQ:

The MiQ approach definitely resonates with digital-first marketers, especially with the YouTube TV inclusion. Here is the breakdown of linear TV vs. streaming.

While they were looking at Super Bowl ads, the team broke them down by category as well. Health / Pharma accounted for 7% of the total.

Edison Research surveyed 2,253 Americans 13+ in October to find out contemporary feelings about TikTok. This is certainly relevant since the platform was saved in January and is no longer threatened in the US.

The market in which TikTok operates is 86% of the US population with 248 million using some form of social media.

The platform is definitely successful. Nearly 50% of Americans use it at least monthly. However, for many pharma marketers the ages of these users is important. 74% of Americans aged 13-24 use the platform but if your audience is in the 45+ group then only 23% use it and these are concentrated toward the younger end of that large range (you don't know that, but it's almost certainly true -Ed.).

The users on the platform are overwhelmingly positive about the experience. Here we see that the negative emotions are grouped at the bottom and there is no mixing at all.

The survey asked users what they have done after seeing an ad on the platform. 83% have taken some form of action including both researching and recommending the product or service to others.

It remains to be seen if users continue this love affair with the platform now that it is being trained on US data... but the odds are they will. They are certainly starting from a good place.

Uberall conducted research into 2,000 consumers in the US, UK, France, and Germany as well as 200 senior US marketers. The full results of that report on local search were also reported in the Wire.

As a reminder, AI search was in the top-three channels for 18.6% of consumers searching for local businesses.

We have to remind readers that Google's AI Overviews are really blurring the lines between the search engine and pure play AI providers.

The report has some eye-opening stats:

A financial projection from HealthView Services looks at how much the average American will spend on healthcare in retirement. The report provides a breakdown for Missouri for two fictional couples.

After showing this chart, the report immediately states:

Sure. 

When CEOs are asked about positives and negatives heading into 2026 they said AI and inflation, respectively. It's a complex environment as we cross the halfway point in Q1 of 2026 but there is a lot of optimism in the market.

In a blog post LinkedIn talks about what marketers want to get more out of AI. Skills and tech lead the list.

When asked what AI can be used for the marketers went straight for content production first, then analytics.

This study came from data in two studies of healthcare workers which included 131 821 individuals from 2 cohorts with up to 43 years of follow-up. That is some serious brew time (stop it -Ed.).

In their own words:

This chart shows the significant benefit of multiple cups of coffee per day for dementia diagnoses. 

The chart would have to be extended for the Author's intake but it doesn't seem to be diluting benefit (no one wants to know how much coffee you consume -Ed.).

For subjective perception the researchers also see a benefit.

So, get those beans and brew yourself a delicious dementia-reduction cuppa.