What will healthcare communications look like in 2026? Amiculum’s prediction of upcoming trends
December 16, 2025 | AI, JCA, Market Access, Patient-integrated Communications, VuuAI, genAI, healthcare communications, misinformation, omnichannel, trends
By Sarah Theobald
2025 marked a turning point for healthcare communications. Organizations accelerated the shift from traditional channels to integrated digital ecosystems and AI-powered tools began to play a central role. As we move forwards in 2026, it’s the perfect time to not only reflect but also look ahead at what’s to come. What changes will shape healthcare communications? In this article, we look at a few of the key trends that we expect to emerge:
- GenAI automation and hyper-personalization of content
- The rise of healthcare content creators and the challenge of misinformation
- A new market access paradigm
- Increasing prominence of patient-integrated communications
If you work in healthcare and want to see if you agree with our predictions, read on.
How will genAI content automation platforms change the game?
2026 will see the launch of novel genAI platforms that will revolutionize how we deliver compliant content. These platforms, such as VuuAI, will enable significant acceleration of approval processes, rapidly validating compliance and pharma brand integrity. They’ll also allow us to create optimized and effective brand and disease area content for multiple audiences, fast. As VuuAI’s CEO and Co-founder, Paul Tunnah, says: “This has the potential to completely reimagine the future engagement model of pharmaceutical companies and their agencies.”
Not only will AI-powered content generation and approval allow us to boost the turnaround of the content we’re already developing, but it will also unlock far greater potential for multiple iterations of resources for different audience profiles, moving us a big step closer to truly tailored communications.
Can we achieve hyper-personalization?
Getting content that fits one specific healthcare professional’s (HCP’s) or patient’s needs has, up to now, been almost impossible, and generalizations have been needed. Now, AI is enabling us to start truly personalizing communications, something that is particularly important in rare diseases where populations are small, dispersed and highly heterogeneous.
Personalization is also driven by a better understanding of our target audiences and how they’ll respond to content. Our recent blog looked at how AI-enabled creation and validation of audience personas can allow us to test communications and messaging in ‘close-to-real-life’ scenarios with a ‘virtual’ HCP. Not only is this valuable to increase resonance, but also a huge cost saving as it allows us to get to the right outputs quickly. Click here to visit that blog when you’re finished with this one.
When it comes to HCPs, we’ve already seen firsthand how AI agents on our Amiculum-built websites can deliver answers to an individual physician’s queries. This can supplement MSL interactions with digital support, delivering pre-approved messaging at the point of need. It can also continuously scan interactions for adverse events and product complaints, automatically routing flagged cases to pharmacovigilance and medical teams for timely, compliant follow-up.
We’ve been major advocates of tailored omnichannel communications for some time, and these developments are driving us closer to making this a reality across pharma marketing and medical teams. We’re excited to see this really take off in 2026.
How will misinformation direct pharma’s content plans?
As AI adoption has surged, so has the risk of misinformation. Deloitte recently came under scrutiny over fabricated citations that were included in a report on education system modernization [1]. Although not yet confirmed, it’s believed these fake sources may have been a result of hallucinations generated by AI large language models.
The overwhelming desire to speed up and scale content can lead to serious consequences if not created using robust platforms designed for pharma. There has always been misinformation, or even disinformation, but we now enter an era of even higher risk of misunderstanding and miscommunication. One effect of this is felt acutely by patients, who are becoming more uncertain of what to believe and where to go for accurate information. Earlier in 2025, we conducted a survey for patients with genetic conditions and their relatives. We asked where they seek trusted information, and HCPs were ranked number one. In second place were patient advocacy groups, followed by websites (third) and social media (fourth). Pharma companies sat in fifth place [2]. This dependency on primary care physicians, compounded by their workload and requirement for continuous learning, means they’re becoming increasingly time-limited, opening up a new market for healthcare content creators, also known as digital opinion leaders (DOLs).
Social media has been an infamously poor place for reliable, accurate healthcare information, and our survey shows that it’s not often the first place patients would actively seek information. As we move into 2026, trustworthy healthcare DOLs could be slowly changing that narrative. This was supported in a panel discussion at the recent NEXT CX & AI 2025 meeting in Vienna, where Arpit Srivastava (NHS HCP and Member of technology appraisal committee at NICE) said: “There are more and more doctors and YouTubers going down a validated clinical content creator route…for a doctor who’s got 40 patients today, they need quick, powerful content so you can’t get better than [TikTok]…the algorithm learns what people are into …it’s really powerful” [3]. The challenge for pharma, finding those authentic, credible voices in a sea of misinformation.
How will access changes impact launch strategies?
In 2025, we saw big changes in EU market access with the rollout of the Joint Clinical Assessment (JCA) process across oncology and advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs). With the JCA process expanding to rare diseases from 2028 onwards, even more pharma teams are going to need to think differently about evidence generation, value stories and launch strategy. This starts now because JCA can impact trial design, comparator selection and overall product strategy from the outset. There will be learnings emerging from the first wave of JCAs in the new year, so 2026 will be a year of implementing change based on this new paradigm.
Alongside JCA, there has been an increase in the number of ‘most favoured nation’-type agreements between pharma and the USA, and between countries. All of these will increase the pressure on pharma with an increasing need to identify and prioritize those launch markets that offer the most competitive routes to access and commercial success. Markets that don’t offer a sufficiently attractive launch environment are in danger of getting left behind.
We foresee significant change and some turmoil in market access in 2026, but also opportunities for pharma to plan the direction for product and launch strategy early, ensuring they face upcoming changes head-on.
Could it be the year where patient-centric communications transitions from nice to have to non-negotiable?
In 2026, healthcare communications is expected to become more patient-focused and digitally intelligent, moving closer to personalization, but within the boundaries of compliance. Generative AI and modular content frameworks will support the creation of adaptable messaging that reflects patient needs, literacy levels and cultural context. Compliance expectations are likely to continue rising, with greater emphasis on ethical engagement, transparency and accessibility standards embedded into workflows. Patient advocacy partnerships will progress to structured co-creation models, supported by frameworks such as PALADIN [4] and ABPI/PIF [5] guidance, ensuring transparency and meaningful patient input. The overarching trend: clarity, equity and automation will drive engagement, reducing clinician burden while delivering communications that feel more human and empathetic.
Central to achieving this vision is the patient voice. It ensures we humanize data, build trust and captivate audiences with compelling storytelling. Research shows that storytelling allows individuals to connect with the information being conveyed, both intellectually and emotionally, and has the power to change how people think and to influence their behaviour [6]. Again, AI personas could help here, but better interactions with real patients are what will really make the difference. In a recent interview we hosted with Trishna Bharadia, an award-winning health advocate and patient engagement consultant, she stated: “[patient engagement and patient insights] should be recognized as a critical element for the medicine’s developmental lifecycle, it’s not just a nice to have, it’s absolutely crucial in order to develop treatments that are the most appropriate for the end users, who are the patients.”
We look forward to seeing how these trends, and others, unfold in the coming months. Watch this space for our take on news and events, and if you’d like to talk about your plans for the new year, get in touch with us today.
For more insights, visit our website
References
- https://theindependent.ca/news/lji/major-n-l-healthcare-report-contains-errors-likely-generated-by-a-i/
- https://amiculum.biz/insights/what-do-people-look-for-in-gene-therapy-materials-results-from-our-survey-of-patients-and-relatives/?page=2
- Launch Blind: How Pharma Fails HCPs and Patients in the Pre-Launch Phase – NetworkPharma.tv
- https://sites.tufts.edu/paladinconsortium/getting-started-checklist-pags-industry/
- https://www.abpi.org.uk/publications/working-together-a-handbook-for-industry-and-patient-organisation-partnerships-2025/
- https://www.who.int/westernpacific/newsroom/feature-stories/item/the-power-of-storytelling-for-health-impact
This content was provided by Amiculum
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