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Where do HCPs find their medical information today and how does it impact pharmaceutical companies?

Published on 14 November 2025 Read 25 min

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Physicians have never had more access to medical information. Yet this information abundance creates new challenges. Many practitioners report feeling overwhelmed by the proliferation of clinical guidelines, content formats, and the growing complexity of indications, particularly those with limited time for information search, often restricted to breaks such as lunchtime.

Traditional channels remain dominant, including scientific journals, newsletters, conferences, medical societies, and interactions with medical representatives. However, they are evolving, offering more modern formats that better align with today’s expectations, such as webinars, enriched newsletters, short videos, and a growing presence on social media. Some studies¹ point that nine out of ten physicians expect their time spent on digital resources for professional purposes to increase in the coming year. In parallel, a new generation of physicians, more digitally fluent, is exploring innovative solutions designed to streamline information access, including AI-powered search engines, mobile applications, social platforms, and online medical communities.

In this article, Alcimed explores the emerging dynamics shaping how physicians access medical information, by answering the following questions: Why and how do physicians currently search for medical information? How can emerging solutions better address physician’s needs? What can be pharma companies’ role in this transformation?

Why and how do physicians currently search for medical information?

Physicians typically seek information for two main needs:

To stay up to date: most doctors dedicate several hours per week to keeping current with medical advances, treatment guidelines, and new research.
To find answers for a specific patient case: this occurs less frequently, around 2 to 4 times per month, but requires highly targeted information.

To meet these needs, physicians turn to a range of channels depending on the context. For staying current, physicians rely mainly on three channels. Medical conferences remain a cornerstone, with most doctors attending two to three events per year. These gatherings are considered essential for accessing the latest developments in disease management and treatment advances. Scientific journals and their newsletters also play a major role. Although physicians may not read every article in detail, subscriptions and curated updates serve as trusted sources for continuous education. Lastly, there are still regular interactions with sales representatives from pharma companies. Their effectiveness, however, depends largely on the relevance of the content, the quality of engagement, and the timing of the visit.

When it comes to solving specific patient cases, physicians tend to turn to more targeted resources. PubMed remains the go-to reference for peer-reviewed evidence, particularly for rare or unfamiliar conditions. In parallel, peer-to-peer exchanges, whether formal or informal, are often the first stop for practical, experience-based input, especially in complex or ambiguous cases.

Across both types of needs, physicians tend to evaluate sources based on three core expectations¹:

Information relevance: Is the content useful, accurate, and aligned with their specialty or clinical challenge?
Appropriate communication channel: Is the format adapted to their needs (e.g. scientific journals for deep analysis, newsletters for quick updates, etc.)?
Visit cadence: How often do they need to visit or consult the source? Is it a one-off search or a regular activity?

Most of the time, the channels currently in use only partially meet these expectations. Doctors increasingly expect personalized, actionable, and seamlessly delivered information, but the current ecosystem remains fragmented, time-consuming, and poorly aligned with their daily workflow.

Moreover, the quantity of medical information accessible to HCPs has skyrocketed over the last years, and physicians have increasingly more difficulties sorting out what is the important information from everything that they can see. Then, can new technologies help more efficient information seeking?

How can emerging solutions better address physician’s needs?

Three main solutions could greatly enhance and reshape how physicians find information:

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Today, AI is everywhere, and doctors are no exception. Physicians are already using it extensively to search for information, and adoption is expected to rise further. For instance, in France, 4 out of 10 physicians declare using AI tools regularly (ranging from once a day to once a month)².

Physicians are indeed actively using ChatGPT as a support tool, especially with relatively complex cases, as can be found in online testimonies and recent statistics: today, French doctors use AI to search for information about diseases (20% of AI use cases) or to assist with diagnosis (11%).³

While generalist AIs like ChatGPT remain widely used, a new generation of specialized tools is emerging, designed specifically for clinicians’ needs. For example, Consensus AI, launched in 2022, offers doctors a research-focused AI engine that quickly surfaces and interprets peer-reviewed articles across a wide range of medical topics. Similarly, OpenEvidence, developed in part by Harvard Medical School faculty and powered by ChatGPT in 2022, enables real-time querying of diseases and symptoms. It scans medical literature, summarizes key findings, and points to primary sources, even during patient consultations.

It is thus not a secret that AI is booming in healthcare. Doctors appreciate having a one-stop-shop with high-quality, relevant insights, intuitive navigation and precise responses.

Still, some challenges remain. The cost of these tools, especially when linked to paywalled journals, can limit access. Questions also persist around the reliability and exhaustivity of AI outputs in complex or rare cases, and whether these tools can truly adapt to the diversity of real-life clinical situations.

Medical Applications

While not powered by AI, some digital applications are specifically designed to offer HCPs fast and structured access to reliable information. For instance, the French partnership between Maiia and the Claude Bernard database (2020) provides a user-friendly medical search tool integrated into teleconsultation workflows. Also, UpToDate is used by many physicians looking for quick, evidence-based answers on their phone during a consultation, especially for complex drug interactions.

These tools offer clear benefits over traditional sources such as printed journals or static PDFs: they are accessible in real time, regularly updated, and designed with clinical workflows in mind. However, their limitations lie in their relatively rigid structure, and in some cases, a paywall that restricts access for a wider group of practitioners.

Social Media and Peer-to-Peer Networks

A growing number of doctors also turn to social media and closed-group communities to exchange practical knowledge. According to some studies⁴, 72% of physicians believe social platforms improve patient care, and over 30% already use them for professional purposes. In some areas, like neurology, platforms such as SERMO offer a space for peer exchange and clinical discussion. In Brazil, informal WhatsApp groups between practitioners have become a widespread tool for case discussion and sharing clinical resources in real time. For instance, EndoNews WhatsApp network, created in 2017 by Dr. Alberto da Silva Dias, includes 12 groups and over 3,000 endocrinologists and HCPs members.

Compared to traditional search methods, social media offer immediacy, peer validation, and practical experience sharing. On the downside, these channels rarely cite primary sources, which raise concerns about the quality and traceability of the information exchanged.

Rethinking pharma’s role as a trusted partner for physicians’ access to information

In recent years, physicians have voiced growing frustration with their interactions with the pharmaceutical industry. It is often reported that 81% of physicians express dissatisfaction with their interactions with biopharmaceutical companies⁵. While they still value high-quality clinical data and practical tools to better support their patients, many feel overwhelmed by an excess of content that is often poorly targeted and delivered in inconvenient formats.

This highlights a paradox: Need for clarification on medical information remains high, yet pharmaceutical companies struggle to maintain their role as a trusted, helpful partners to HCPs. At the same time, this moment presents a major opportunity to reimagine how information is shared and how meaningful collaboration with physicians can be rebuilt.

Pharma companies have already begun shifting toward more agile, targeted, and user-centric engagement models, to deliver the right information at the right moment to the right physicians. Medical Affairs teams, in particular, are well positioned to lead this evolution. They can become strategic allies who help physicians integrate science into clinical practice in ways that directly impact patient care.

Learn more about how our team can support you in your projects related to the pharmaceutical industry >

Several key levers are emerging:

Personalizing information delivery based on each physician’s specialty, habits, and clinical context

This involves designing tailored engagement journeys driven by usage data and behavioral signals, such as searching for information on a condition, attending a webinar, or opening a specific email. This can be enabled by the new tools mentioned earlier: AI that delivers content based on the practitioner’s needs, a stronger and more targeted presence on social media at key moments in the day. Together, these elements allow for greater responsiveness and increased frequency of targeted interaction, shifting from two to three broad campaigns per year to 10–12 dynamic, personalized touchpoints.

Streamlining and improving content formats in a more accessible, engaging, and interactive way

Examples include dynamic infographics, intelligent literature search engines, or AI-generated clinical summaries, often integrated into mobile applications designed specifically for physicians. Some pharmaceutical players are already rolling out platforms that combine modular, specialty-specific content with access to direct support for more complex questions.

While traditional channels remain dominant, the explosion of medical information, guidelines, and sources is pushing physicians toward more personalized and omnichannel solutions, whether they’re staying up to date or seeking answers for specific patient cases.

Pharmaceutical companies have a key role to play in this transition. With their scientific expertise and resources, they are uniquely positioned to deliver the right information, to the right physician, at the right moment. This shift could create value at all levels: time savings for physicians, more tailored care for patients, and deeper engagement for pharma.

At Alcimed, we support healthcare players in identifying these emerging trends and turning them into actionable strategies.

Curious to explore how information-seeking behaviors are evolving, and how your organization can adapt accordingly? Don’t hesitate to contact our team.

About the authors,

Martin, Project Manager and Gabriel, Consultant in Alcimed’s Healthcare team in France

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