At Intempio, I worked with medical communications companies for years, and I’m watching something pretty wild happen right now. The entire industry is about to get turned upside down by AI tools, and most of them don’t see it coming.

The current medcomm model

MedComm has worked the same for years: Pharma companies pay specialized agencies to create educational content, training materials, conference presentations, and regulatory documents. These agencies charge premium rates because they have specialized knowledge about medical writing, compliance requirements, and industry standards.

A typical project might cost $30-50k and take 6-8 weeks to complete. Why so expensive? Because you need medical writers who understand both the science and the regulatory environment, plus editors, compliance reviewers, and project managers.

But here’s what’s happening now: I’m seeing life science companies produce the same quality content in-house using AI tools, in about 1/10th the time, for basically the cost of a ChatGPT Plus subscription.

What I’m seeing in real client work

Last month, I watched a medical affairs team at a mid-size biotech company create a comprehensive disease education program that would have cost them $150k if they’d hired an agency. Instead, they used ChatGPT and some custom prompts to:

  • Draft patient education materials
  • Create healthcare provider training modules
  • Generate FAQ documents for their medical affairs team
  • Write abstracts for upcoming conferences

Total cost: Maybe $200 in API credits and about 40 hours of internal time.

Was it as good as their normal MedComm? No, not really but - it was good enough and they could validate it internally with their med affairs team.

The technical stuff that makes this possible

The breakthrough isn’t just ChatGPT - it’s the combination of fine-tuned language models with vector databases that can provide real-time access to medical literature and regulatory guidance.

Here’s what that actually means in practice:

You can now train an AI system on your company’s previous medical communications, regulatory submissions, and brand guidelines. Then you can give it access to current medical literature through something like a PubMed API integration.

The result is an AI that can write in your company’s voice, cite current research, and follow regulatory requirements - all while producing content faster than a human medical writer.

Why agencies are in trouble

The traditional medcomm model assumes that specialized knowledge is scarce and expensive to access. But when that knowledge gets encoded into AI systems that anyone can use, the value proposition completely changes.

Companies don’t need to pay $300/hour for medical writers when they can get similar output from AI tools that cost $20/month.

I don’t think this has to be an extinction event for medcomm agencies. The smart ones are already adapting by:

Building AI-powered tools for their clients instead of just selling writing services. One agency I know is developing custom AI systems that their pharma clients can use internally. This mimics the tradition “stickiness mode” that agencies have been doing for years.

Focusing on strategy and high-level guidance rather than content production. AI can write, but it can’t (yet) develop comprehensive communication strategies or navigate complex regulatory challenges.

Becoming AI integration specialists who help life science companies implement these tools safely and effectively.

What happens next

This transition is happening whether the industry wants it or not. The companies that adapt quickly are going to have a massive competitive advantage in terms of content volume, speed to market, and cost efficiency.

And for medcomm agencies? My guess is the window for adaptation is probably 24-36 months. After that, the value proposition gets really hard to justify.

But that’s actually enough time to completely reinvent the business model. The question is whether they’ll use that time.