The Real Impact of AI on Healthcare Marketing

Over the past two years AI has dominated the discourse across all industries and all functional areas. The use of AI in healthcare and healthcare marketing has been a particularly hot topic. To get a real pulse on the industry, we asked members of the Swaay.Health Community for their opinion on AI.

Commitment to Privacy and Appropriate use Needed for AI

“I’m excited about AI in healthcare marketing for its potential to elevate HCP-patient conversations, deliver personalized patient experiences and enhance outreach efficiency. However, I dread the ethical concerns, such as data privacy and the risk of miscommunication.  Achieving an appropriate equilibrium between innovation and patient trust will be essential in this changing environment.

I strongly believe that in the entire healthcare ecosystem, HCP community is one that suffers information overload because of multiple and irrelevant ads being pushed at them all the time, disturbing them and hindering their decision-making. We at Doceree, have recently introduced the concept of Doceree Nudges as a pledge to empower HCPs with ONLY relevant messaging within their workflows that will potentially empower them, as against overwhelming them—again, only with the most effective and ethical use of AI. We will be building on this thought and hopefully be inspiring the industry to adopt the art of responsible advertising with AI.”

– Kamya Elawadhi, Chief Client Officer at Doceree

AI Allows Marketers to Focus on More Strategic Initiatives – Ethically

“Over the past 12-18 months, the increased attention around AI has sparked greater adoption of our AI tools, particularly those designed to improve personalization, content generation, and audience engagement. Our stance on AI emphasizes ethical use, human oversight, and transparency. For instance, AI helps us refine marketing materials, enhance engagement, optimize content, and streamline repetitive tasks, but is not the final answer. It allows us marketers, to be the reviewer and editor, which takes significantly less time and enables us to focus on more strategic initiatives. It also assists with generating new ideas, refining messaging, and ensuring that our marketing materials remain relevant and engaging across different channels. As with all AI tools, we prioritize using it responsibly, adhering to privacy guidelines and ensuring human oversight remains a critical part of the process.”

– Karen Bucks, Chief Marketing Officer at CentralReach

AI is a Partner to Marketing

“AI can be a powerful productivity partner for marketers, helping save time, fill gaps, and improve outputs—but it shouldn’t be used to generate reader-facing content. AI lacks the empathy and nuance that healthcare audiences, in particular, need. If AI is used, for things like navigational content, it should be disclosed. Organizations need a clear policy on when and how they use AI in marketing, and transparency should be a top priority, ensuring trust isn’t compromised in the process.”

– Lacey Reichwald, Director of Marketing at Aha Media Group

Responsible AI will Help Staff Burnout and Meet Patients Where They Are

“With shortages and burnout fueling a staffing crisis in healthcare, resources are spread thin. As the buzz around AI simultaneously escalates, AI chatbots have found the ideal application within a rapidly evolving industry. When employees gain more time to focus on urgent matters, they’ll feel more effective in their roles, which is critical to satisfaction at work and reducing burnout. An effective AI chatbot meets patients where they are at through an omnichannel approach with options to communicate by phone, text or online chat. It can utilize responsible AI to compile a dynamic knowledge base, decipher the patient’s inquiry and respond with the relevant information. Responsible AI connects to an ecosystem of authorized resources — in the world of healthcare, this often includes the patient’s health record — to collect information. When it comes to using AI for patient data analysis, there are several ethical considerations to keep in mind to ensure that the technology is used responsibly, and in a way that protects patient rights and well-being. This includes ensuring HIPAA compliance, only collecting and using the minimum amount of data necessary, and making sure data is anonymized or de-identified to reduce the risk of privacy violations.”

– Donald Thompson, Head of Marketing at Televox