In the latest episode of Doceree Dialogue, Ritesh Patel sits down with Badal Shah, President and Founder, Neolytica, part of the QPharma Group. What unfolded was an eye-opening conversation about the hidden signals HCPs leave behind, the power of sentiment-led data, and how GenAI can finally make personalization scalable — not superficial.
Badal opens with a simple but startling insight:
“On an average, a human being is downloading around 74 GB of data in a single day.”
He jokes that this is like “listening to Baby Shark 20,000 times,” but the point is serious — with so much noise consuming every individual, healthcare professionals are no exception. And yet, pharma still often approaches them with one-size-fits-all messaging.
HCPs are constantly expressing what they care about: through conferences, podcasts, medical forums, niche oncology platforms, and thousands of digital spaces. As Badal puts it: “They’re giving signs. They’re telling us what they like, what they don’t like.”
Neolytica’s approach? Go where traditional listening tools won’t. That means going beyond Twitter and YouTube, scraping or manually collecting insights from specialized clinical platforms — even when APIs don’t exist.
They then layer human expertise on top:
350 medical experts annotating sentiment, context, and meaning — a foundation that now trains their GenAI engine to automate 80% of analysis with 95% confidence.
Both agree that the opportunity isn’t just identifying the right HCPs — it’s crafting the right content.
But personalization is notoriously hard in medical, legal, and regulatory environments.
Badal’s view: “Customization makes a huge difference… It has to be aligned to your messaging, and it must be explainable.”
So Neolytica creates “buckets” of conversation themes and assigns HCPs to them dynamically. For field teams, they’ve launched Next Best Dialogue — a tool that gives MSLs and TLLs fully personalized talking points driven by real concerns and real conversations.
The result? “Engagement increase was almost 78%... from 2–3% before.”
Not small gains. Transformational ones.
Ritesh points to a major market reality:
Today, 50–60% of hospitals are “do not call”. Reps can’t get in. Doctors still need information — but the door is shut.
Badal highlights an even more alarming stat:
“Only 14% of HCPs feel pharma gives them the right information.”
They’re overwhelmed, misaligned, or simply ignored.
This is where both see a path forward: AI-driven, on-demand, contextual support at the moment an HCP needs it.
Ritesh shares:
“We announced an agentic AI live rep — it engages HCPs you’ll never talk to because you don’t have the manpower.”
Badal sees it as transformational:
“You can now knock on the doors of do-not-disturb places. They’re not shutting the door because they don’t need information — they’re overwhelmed.”
Imagine a world where an HCP wonders about pediatric dosing while inside the EHR and can get an answer instantly — without a rep, without a meeting, without friction.
Ritesh adds:
“Trigger the message at that contextual time… If they need dosing info, they can just ask the agent right there.”
For Badal, the biggest impact lies in rare diseases — where patient journeys often span 2–3 years and require 7–8 touchpoints before an accurate diagnosis.
Patients get the wrong treatment, feel worse, switch physicians, and lose time they can’t afford to lose.
Badal believes GenAI can radically compress that timeline:
“If we can reduce rare disease diagnosis from two years to one year — that changes lives.”
But this requires identifying the real gatekeepers — often not specialists, but internists and family physicians who may overlook subtle cues. Educating those gatekeepers through timely, personalized messages could close the gap.
Ritesh asks Badal for one prediction:
“What could revolutionize how we engage doctors in the next 18 months?”
Badal’s answer points to a patient-first vision:
“Personalized content and communication… so your clinical trials go from 12–15 years to five. Because the biggest time saver is finding the patients.”
He hints at Neolytica’s next phase — combining new, real-time data signals beyond traditional claims datasets. Data that reflects today, not last quarter.
This episode surfaces a simple but powerful truth:
We already have the signals. What we’ve needed is the right intelligence to interpret and act on them in real time.
With dynamic sentiment data, explainable GenAI, contextual triggers, and AI-powered engagement, the gap between insight and action is closing — fast.
And if this ecosystem comes together, as Badal notes:
“At the end of the day, we are all working for patient care.”
The opportunity is bigger than better marketing. It’s better outcomes — delivered faster.