Last year, our team surveyed nearly 1,500 patients across the United States to better understand how people are navigating their health journeys today and where the system is falling short.
What emerged is more than a set of statistics. It’s a signal of where healthcare is heading and who will lead it.
Patients are increasingly turning to digital tools earlier in their journey, often before a diagnosis is made. And while patients aren’t explicitly demanding that pharmaceutical companies provide these tools, they are actively gravitating toward whoever does.
This marks a critical shift: patients are not loyal to brands alone; they are loyal to experiences that help them move forward. Other tech and digital health companies already understand this. They are building tools that meet patients in moments of uncertainty and earn trust early.
If pharma doesn’t step into this space now, others will define it instead.
For years, engagement in pharma has revolved around diagnosis and prescription. But that model reflects a world that no longer exists. Today, patients are forming relationships, building trust, and choosing who to rely on long before treatment starts.
The future belongs to organizations that orient around consumer digital health first, not as a downstream add-on, but as the foundation of how care begins.
From Customer Experience to Care Delivery
For a long time, the industry focused on customer experience. Better websites, better portals, more content, more touchpoints.
That work mattered, but experience alone is no longer enough to compete.
Patients today want something deeper. They want help understanding symptoms and coping with uncertainty. They’re looking for tools that don’t just inform, but actively support care.
They expect education, access, lifestyle, and treatment to work together as a single, coherent journey rather than a fragmented set of handoffs.
This is where the competitive landscape is shifting.
We believe that 2025 marked a turning point. The focus is moving away from surface-level engagement and toward continuous, digitally enabled care. The organizations that move first will define expectations, earn trust earlier, and set the standard for others.
Pharma has a rare opportunity to lead this transition compliantly, responsibly, and at scale.
The question is no longer whether this model will take hold. It’s who will get there first.
Three Gaps Holding the Industry Back
Our survey, which included patients ages 18-88 across all 50 states and 39 condition areas, revealed three emerging gaps.
1. The Care Expectation Gap
What patients want and need does not align with what pharma currently provides.
2. The Support Infrastructure Gap
Care systems remain fragmented, inconsistent, or unavailable when patients need them most.
3. The Personalization Gap
Different demographics, therapeutic areas, and life stages require different approaches, yet most commercial models remain standardized.
Closing these gaps is no longer optional.
For organizations that provide medicines, care, and health solutions, it is both a strategic and ethical responsibility to move beyond “minding the gap” and begin actively closing it.
Gap One: Patients Are Ready for Pharma-Led Digital Support
One of the most debated questions in the industry is whether patients actually want pharmaceutical companies to provide digital care experiences.
We found that 81 percent of respondents are open to using pharma-provided digital health tools. Only 9 percent would actively avoid pharma tools altogether.
Patients were presented with a broad range of tools: condition and treatment education, symptom checking, lifestyle guidance, AI health support, medication reminders, communities, scheduling, and telehealth.
Even though 81 percent are open to pharma-provided digital tools, only half currently use one. That gap reflects a missed opportunity. If companies are not providing these capabilities, they are falling behind patient demand.
Thirty-four percent see drug companies as responsible for providing online health tools for managing their condition. But when asked about “The company that makes my medication,” that number jumps up to 40 percent, for a total of 52 percent who believe drug makers should play this role in offering digital support — even higher than medical associations (42 percent). The fact that “drug companies” in general differ so much from their specific drug manufacturer underscores the importance of relationship-building and familiarity in impacting patients’ expectations, trust, and openness in interacting with the otherwise broad “big pharma.”
“If you build it, they will come” applies here. But only if it is built with rigor, credibility, and patient-first design.
The Trust Barrier — and How to Overcome It
Despite broad openness to pharma-led tools, a trust gap remains.
Overall trust in digital health tools remains high at 79 percent. For pharma tools, that figure drops to 71 percent. Thirty-nine percent worry about excessive promotion or pill-pushing, and 39 percent fear a lack of data privacy and security. Only 6 percent had no concerns about using pharma-provided tools.
The trust concerns are real. But so is the opportunity to earn back trust by making tools highly credible, that build brand affinity, and create engagement.
The most important criteria for driving trust? Having tools that are overseen by board-certified physicians, grounded in evidence, HIPAA-compliant, free from excessive marketing, and designed to support, not replace, in-person care.
Some companies respond to skepticism by hiding behind “unbranded” tools. But removing a logo does not create trust. Patients are not questioning the name on the product. They are questioning who is accountable for it, how it is governed, and whether it truly serves their interests. Strong medical oversight and clear standards are what build credibility, not anonymity.
And for those who remain skeptical, it is worth remembering how quickly behavior can shift. A few years ago, it would have seemed unimaginable that tens of millions of people would turn to automated systems for daily health guidance. Today, it is routine.
The frontier has moved. And patients expect pharma to move with it.
Gap Two: The Rising Demand for AI-Powered Support
Even though more than 40 million people use AI tools daily to ask health-related questions, skepticism still remains. Patients worry about accuracy. They worry about privacy. They worry about losing human connection.
Still, users report clear value in AI tools. Fifty-eight percent of consumers who have used AI for health find it helpful for making sense of symptoms, while 49 percent find it helpful for explaining diagnosis and treatment in plain language.
These tools are often used alongside lifestyle support throughout the patient journey, including telehealth pathways, help finding in-person care, and content about patient experiences. Sixty percent of people who have used AI for health have found it helpful, specifically for finding the right providers or prepping for a visit. Patients are also increasingly seeking medication reminders. This reflects a rising demand for wraparound care solutions that extend beyond information alone.
For pharma, the opportunity is not to deploy generic AI. It is to deliver clinically governed, medically validated intelligence that enhances care rather than replacing it.
Gap Three: No “Average” Patient
Perhaps the most important insight from the data is this: there is no average patient. Yet, many commercial models still behave as if there is.
Patients across different ages, conditions, and stages of disease face very different challenges. While the need for care is universal, the barriers to getting it are highly specific. Our data shows that demographic and clinical segments are navigating entirely different obstacle courses. To close these gaps, pharma must deliver flexible, multi-pronged digital support rather than relying on static, one-size-fits-all models.
Digital engagement varies sharply by age. Thirty-four percent of millennials and 28 percent of Gen Z use AI monthly, compared with just 8 percent of Boomers.
Differences also emerge between recently diagnosed and stable patients. Recently diagnosed patients rely heavily on AI for navigation and understanding, with 38 percent using it at least every month or so. Stable patients, on the other hand, point to lifestyle factors such as nutrition, sleep, and stress management as their primary challenge. While pharma often focuses on adherence, patients are using digital tools to support daily living and mindset, representing a significant opportunity.
Diagnostic delays further compound these challenges. Across conditions, 55 percent of patients wait over a year for diagnosis. In dermatology and other specialties, diagnosis often takes three to five years, driven in part by health equity barriers. White dermatology patients are often diagnosed at roughly twice the rate of Black patients in that first year.
Across conditions, Black patients are 41 percent more likely than White patients to report difficulty reaching the right diagnosis, with 63 percent of Black patients waiting over a year compared to 52 percent of White patients.
Women’s health and mental health patients experience particularly high levels of provider friction. More than ⅓ struggle with feeling dismissed or unheard, a pattern that contributes to delayed diagnosis and prolonged uncertainty. These patients are also more likely than any other group to say that experiencing symptoms without knowing what condition they have is the most difficult part of their journey.
In this context, AI-enabled tools that support symptom tracking, documentation, and care navigation can help patients connect the dots, advocate for themselves, and reduce the risk of being overlooked.
A New Competitive Reality
The new consumer battlefield is being reshaped by technology companies entering healthcare. This is not experimentation. It is strategic positioning. And it is a direct threat to patient relationships.
These companies are shaping how patients interpret symptoms, where they turn first for answers, and which pathways they follow into care. They are shaping trust early. And whoever owns the first interaction owns the relationship.
Pharma, however, holds a powerful advantage.
Pharma brings clinical validation, regulatory expertise, real-world evidence, and established provider and patient relationships. These are assets that technology companies simply do not have. When a physician recommends a digital tool, trust rises dramatically.
This creates a clear mandate. Pharma must become a validated navigator or trusted guide that helps patients understand what to do next, early, responsibly, and accurately. If pharma doesn’t fill that role, someone else will.
And the stakes are high.
Every month a patient remains undiagnosed is both a clinical and commercial failure. For the 28 percent who wait three to five years for answers, shortening that journey represents the largest growth lever heading into 2026.
That journey is increasingly digital. Digital health is no longer a wraparound or marketing add-on. It is becoming the backbone of modern care.
This requires a shift in mindset. The old commercial model was built on the last mile of care, the prescription. The new model must own the first mile, the moment a patient feels something is wrong and reaches for their phone.
In the years ahead, the most successful pharmaceutical companies will not be defined by advertising spend or brand recall. They will be defined by whether they built the trusted digital infrastructure that guided uncertain, worried patients into the right care, early.
They will be the companies that met patients at symptom onset, provided credible and unbiased guidance, earned trust through evidence, and supported care beyond the prescription.
Don’t just mind the gap.
Own it. Then close it.
