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PulsePoint’s annual HealthNEXT Summit focuses on the most pressing issues health marketers face today. This year’s summit, which took place August 4 in New York City, was a high-impact, single-day event where the industry’s top doers, thinkers, and innovators came together to discuss how health marketing is changing and what they can do to future-proof their strategies.
This post is part of a series of the top takeaways from each of the summit’s sessions, including expert-led panels, one-on-one fireside chats, and innovation breakouts.
4 Key Takeaways from Our Data Panel
HCP data is at the heart of health marketing, but its variability is also a vulnerability. Without real industry standards, quality ranges wildly. And quality is important: It shapes every decision downstream, from targeting to measurement to ROI. So how do brands ensure they’re working with data they can actually trust?
This panel, moderated by PulsePoint Chief Data Officer Jonathan Zile, brought together marketing leaders to discuss what good data looks like, what bad data costs marketers, and where AI fits in. Here are some key takeaways from their conversation.
1. Bad data causes big problems
What exactly does bad HCP data cost marketers? Unreliable data can lead to so many downstream effects that the cost is hard to quantify, but our panelists all agreed that even a small inaccuracy can have a major impact.
“Bad data can lead to targeting the wrong person, wasted impressions, wasted media; but the impact really permeates your entire strategy and your marketing,” said Maggie Leathersich, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Butler/Till.
Tyler Nall, Senior Vice President of Business Intelligence at Publicis Health Media, emphasized the ripple effects of bad data. “Think about the complex orchestration systems that most of you are probably deploying today,” he said. “If there’s not good data being fed into those, it’s not just wasted media dollars, it’s a waste of your time.”
2. Brands should have the data quality conversation
While brands don’t always demand proof of data quality, assuming it’s handled upstream, Nall said it’s a conversation that marketers need to have.
“Most of the conversation today around HCP data has been focused on completeness,” he said. “But there isn’t yet enough attention to how confident we can be that, say, the NPI recorded in this row is the one who actually received the impression.” With such a wide variety of media publishers and verification methods available to marketers, Nall said, “There’s a lot of rigor that needs to go into giving us confidence in the marketplace.”
Molly Farrell, Senior Vice President and Programmatic Department Lead at CMI Media Group, added that there’s a ticking clock to every flaw in HCP data. “Often what we’re measuring against with script conversion is something we don’t receive until weeks after this media has been in market. That inherent delay causes an additional problem, because we need to be able to act quickly if we believe that the data is not accurate,” she said.
3. Trust is earned through transparency
When it comes to establishing and maintaining trust, panelists highlighted transparency as one of the most important qualities they look for in data partners.
“Transparency is how you build trust,” Nall said. “When partners are transparent about how they build identity graphs, how data is updated in real time, how they identify the physician in the moment that the impression is delivered, that’s what will give the industry the confidence we need.”
Leathersich said that she takes a “trust then verify” approach with data partners, which means asking the right questions: “How is the data sourced? How are the NPIs opting in? What type of identity graphs are you using to ensure you’re reaching that HCP across all their devices?”
For Farrell, sometimes transparency means having a direct line to the data. “One other element that is key is having the data ingested in the back end of your platform. Not having to call into a third-party source helps me feel confident in the data, because if the third party has an error, you have no control,” she said.
4. AI complicates things
In any discussion about healthcare and reliable information in 2026, artificial intelligence weighs heavily. Our panelists agreed that widespread use of AI isn’t solely a good or a bad thing, but it does complicate the data quality landscape.
Leathersich acknowledged that many patients are turning to chatbots for medical questions, but raised concerns about the outputs. “Good on them for empowering themselves with information, but is that the best data for them? AI is supercharging a lot of our processes, it’s analyzing big data sets on behalf of our clients. We can use it and we should, but it’s really important to understand how we verify and evolve accordingly,” she said.
Nall, on the other hand, focused on the data going into AI models. “With AI, the urgency is to use it, but the responsibility is to put the right data into it. AI use will only be as good as the data we put under it. How do we ensure the right level of confidence to use these systems?” he said.
Confidence, Farrell agreed, is key. At the end of the day, data that marketers can stand behind is data that has been validated by people. “We’re not completely conscious of where things are being pulled from,” she said of AI models. “We all need to be fact-checking until we can feel more confident in the input and the output.”
High-quality HCP data is a cornerstone of the health marketing industry. As our panelists discussed, the stakes are high, but by using the right tools and asking the right questions, marketers can act with confidence using data they trust.
Keep an eye out for more posts diving into each of the topics we discussed at HealthNEXT 2026. Want to be involved in our next event? Contact the team here.
