On August 4, PulsePoint brought clients, partners, and employees together in New York City for HealthNEXT 2026, our annual summit dedicated to the biggest shifts reshaping health marketing right now. Not surprisingly, the big theme of the day was that change is at our doorstep, in the form of AI, and the opportunity it presents is enormous if we proceed with caution.
As we move forward into this next phase of AI-driven health marketing, the biggest non-negotiable is the need for confidence and trust. That call came from doctors practicing medicine, leaders navigating agency transformation, and brands trying to make smarter media decisions. The possibilities are endless, but the industry knows that with innovation comes responsibility.
Before we dive into an overview of the day, we want to say a sincere thank you to every speaker who showed up and shared their experiences, our clients who came to support and learn, and employees who made it all happen.
Here’s a quick overview of what stood out from our first day, but stay tuned for videos and other event coverage.
Doctors see high potential in AI, with an important caveat
Our event kicked off with a panel of physicians - Dr. Jaime Londono of Hofstra/Northwell, Dr. Toral Vaidya of Kurbside Partners, and Dr. Alexandra Gomez-Arteaga of Weill Cornell Medicine - sharing how AI is already transforming their clinical practices: reducing administrative burden, improving remote access to care, distilling medical knowledge faster than ever, and powering the large-scale data models that are revolutionizing clinical research.
But the panel also surfaced something our industry can't ignore. The availability of AI has exposed a large gap in patient education. When, as one doctor cited, 25% of registered ChatGPT users are making at least one health inquiry a week, it signals a need that the industry has failed to adequately meet. And physicians are concerned that patients are getting health information from LLMs that weren't designed for medical education, aren't always accurate and rarely cite their sources.
Later in the day WebMD unveiled WebMD AI, which fulfills exactly those requirements.
AI output is only as good as the data behind It
AI has transformed bidding algorithms, but the quality of the output is entirely dependent on the quality of the data going in. Bad data drives bad media and wasted impressions, and the costs compound downstream.
So what does good data actually look like? Molly Farrell, CMI Media Group; Maggie Leathersich, Butler/Till; and Tyler Nall, Publicis Health Media described it as being about how confident you are that the specific NPI referenced actually received the impression, and drove the script. This requires knowing where your HCP data comes from, how it was sourced, and how seamlessly it integrates into your workflow.
And as AI evolves, a new question is emerging: agent-to-agent communication. Even with good data, as agentic platforms begin to talk to each other, the context embedded in your data becomes just as critical as the original quality of the data.
Consumer health is - and always will be - human at its core
The consumer information landscape has exploded. From GLP-1 conversations on TikTok to AI-generated health answers on ChatGPT, the channels keep multiplying and marketers often feel like it’s impossible to keep up.
But our panelists: Cliff Covey of CMI, Melissa Gordon-Ring of OMD and Glenniss Richards of Bayer gave us the secret: Don't chase the channel; Chase the person.
And what consumers want hasn't changed. They want information that's relevant to them, delivered where they already are, in a way that they trust. The brands winning in consumer health are the ones showing up consistently across the ecosystem with meaningful personalization that meets people in the moment. And they're coordinating resources to make sure the right conversations are happening between the consumer and the HCP.
As if on cue, PulsePoint’s Malcolm Halle presented HCP-to-DTC Influence™, a capability built on that insight. More on that later in this post.
Health media is operating at a new, amplified level
All of our panelists - Brad Liebow, Publicis Health Media; Elizabeth Beringer, Real Chemistry Media; Ray Rosti, Klick Media and Lauren Boyer, CEO, UnderscoreI Marketing - agreed that AI has already changed the media landscape. Planning, buying, and reviewing workflows that once took days are now automated. But the fundamentals haven't changed: you're still buying against audience quality and precision. And someone still needs to be at the helm. For agencies, that raises a critical question: who is holding the accountability?
Creatively, there's a real risk emerging: As AI becomes more ubiquitous, everything starts to look the same, and brand differentiation becomes harder to maintain.
But big wins are coming, from a few different sources: from people with curiosity and a sense of entrepreneurship who are mindfully letting machines handle the repeatable day-to-day tasks while keeping control over strategic decision-making, and from brands using data more deliberately through microsegmentation to be more relevant and timely.
Yes, we’re ready for real omnichannel orchestration
A big myth discussed by our panelists, Jill Kregel, Omnicom Media Health; Rachel Eckerling, Publicis Health Media; Christie Volke, Assembled Intelligence; and Gillian Parrish, Gilead is that omnichannel is about channels. It’s not. It's about the customer experience. And omnichannel is not something you buy, it’s something you operationalize.
With the tech capabilities now available, the industry is ready to move from channel-centric planning to journey-centric planning. But getting there requires three things working together: consolidated oversight so no channel operates in a silo, coordinated messaging so the experience feels seamless rather than disjoined or repetitive, and connected measurement across all digital and beyond, incorporating social, CRM, and field activity into a single view of what's actually working.
The growth of clinical AI presents a marketing opportunity
A uniquely multifunctional panel represented by a clinician, Dr. Katia Dodelzon, a marketer, Ana Wilkinson from Amgen, an agency lead, Lindsey Gidjunis from CMI Media Group, and a platform lead, Dan Johnson from Medscape, dug deep into the opportunity presented by clinical AI.
The volume of medical information today is both a goldmine and a burden. Clinical research is advancing faster than any individual clinician can keep up with, creating knowledge gaps that are hard to reconcile. Physicians are therefore willingly turning to a new generation of clinical AI tools like Medscape AI designed to help them retrieve medical information as they need it, and even gut-check hypotheses and treatment approaches.
In doing so, these tools are opening up a fundamentally new opportunity for brands. For the first time, it's possible to truly listen to when a physician is seeking clinical clarity, and be present at that exact moment, not as an intrusion, but in genuine service to the HCP.
Looking back: Successful case studies
Some of the day's most tangible and exciting moments came from real teams willing to share their campaigns and results with us. Here are the highlights:
- An all-star team from Novo Nordisk walked us through their approach to using intent signals to drive personalized, dynamic, relevant HCP experiences.
- Teams from Good Apple and Butler/Till each presented head to head tests for PulsePoint's Adaptive Optimization product against a competing approach. In both cases, AO far exceeded the alternative.
- CMI Media Group joined Reddit on stage to showcase how they tried something new: reaching HCPs on Reddit, and drove dramatic outcomes
- CMI Media Group and Omnicom presented their success using HCP365 as their search measurement OS.
- Recordati showed our audience what it looks like to unlock true value from granular HCP measurement.
- A CTV panel hosted premium suppliers: Fox, LG and DirecTV along with agency partner Moon Rabbit to highlight where CTV is headed with recent advances in connectivity, signal fidelity and attribution methods.
Looking forward: New product launches
HealthNEXT 2026 wasn't just a day of conversation. It was also a day of announcements. PulsePoint introduced (or re-introduced) four new AI-driven products that signal where health marketing is headed next:
- HCP-to-DTC Influence: A first-of-its-kind capability that uses HCP data to directly inform DTC marketing, identifying the physician signals that drive positive brand conversations to shape DTC campaigns and ultimately drive more scripts.
- Omnichannel orchestration: A system to connect HCP profiles, media engagement, HCP365 data and field data to determine omnichannel next best action and drive dynamic messaging at scale.
- WebMD AI: The WebMD team unveiled their new consumer AI platform for the first time: a true health companion designed to guide patients through their health journey with accuracy, sourcing, and trust built in from the ground up.
- Hatch: In one of the day's most anticipated sessions, PulsePoint's Chief Product Officer, Ezra Suyveke, unveiled Hatch, our next-generation platform natively built around AI and wired directly into our proprietary health data foundation. Hatch represents a fundamentally new way to access all of the power of PulsePoint, but on your own terms.
In closing…
HealthNEXT 2026 was one for the books. All of the panels and conversations between them made one thing abundantly clear, the industry isn't waiting around for change to happen; it's actively building and creating the next chapter now.
Thank you again to every speaker, partner, and attendee who made the day what it was, and to the team behind the scenes who pulled it all together. See you at HealthNEXT 2027.
