How will SearchGPT impact pharma and healthcare?

The recent launch of SearchGPT by OpenAI marks the beginning of a significant shift in how information is searched and consumed for pharma and healthcare industry leaders. Unlike traditional search engines like Google, SearchGPT uses conversational AI to deliver direct, context-driven answers in a natural, human-like way. It provides an experience that is similar to having a conversation with a person and instead of providing a list of links to multiple websites, SearchGPT focuses on answering specific questions clearly and concisely.

While this innovation has broad implications across industries, its potential impact on pharmaceutical businesses and healthcare communication is particularly compelling.

What is SearchGPT and why does it matter for pharma?

SearchGPT is OpenAI's new AI-powered search engine, interpreting queries with a level of understanding and nuance that goes beyond traditional search engines. It delivers responses that are conversational, insightful, and feel more human.

SearchGPT’s ability to grasp user intent with remarkable depth means healthcare focused digital marketing content must evolve. Content and search strategies can no longer just focus on ranking for individual keywords. Healthcare search marketing will now need to focus on providing well-cited, authoritative answers that genuinely meet the needs of HCPs and patients.

Changing the way healthcare information is accessed

SearchGPT has the potential to fundamentally change how people seek and discover information. For pharma companies, failing to establish discoverability in this new search space risks missing out on multiple engagement opportunities. Success will depend on creating expert, human-focused content that builds trust and delivers real value.

SearchGPT’s conversational style makes it easier to find specific answers, which could impact the way professionals and patients seek drug information, treatment protocols, or even clinical research data. If you think about HCPs and how they access medical information, typically they have to wade through multiple, varied sources, looking for reports, information, and data that they believe is trustworthy and relevant. Now, with SearchGPT, that process is much more intuitive, as it is able to understand the context behind the HCP’s questions. It will deliver answers that are much more targeted, drawing from the latest evidence and providing concise, actionable, up-to-date insights.

When it comes to patients, they have traditionally had to explore and navigate a plethora of complex - and sometimes contradictory - health information online. SearchGPT will simplify this for people by offering clear, helpful, and conversational responses, which can be specifically tailored to the patient’s knowledge and understanding.

Building trust through reliable, expert-led content

SearchGPT uses a direct-answer model; HCPs and patients will be experiencing a ‘to and fro’ conversation as they search for answers. Providing instant and conversational responses to search queries, it relies heavily on high-quality information to ensure delivery of trustworthy answers. For pharma companies, this represents both a responsibility and an opportunity, as the spotlight is firmly on the importance of ensuring accurate, reliable content.

As the demand for clear, credible, and accessible medical information grows, pharma companies are uniquely positioned to step up in combatting misinformation. By creating well-cited, expert-led content that aligns with regulatory standards, you can ensure the information patients and healthcare professionals receive is not only accurate, but also actionable.

It is time to reframe healthcare search marketing, so it is no longer solely focusing on aiming to rank higher than the competition.

Opportunities with SearchGPT

Engaging with HCPs: The rise of conversational AI in search brings significant opportunities to engage with HCPs. Until recently, uncovering clinical data or drug information would mean reading lengthy documents, abstracts, or journal articles. With SearchGPT, this process becomes far more efficient. Think of a doctor exploring the “latest updates on X drug efficacy in diabetes”. They can instantly receive concise summaries tailored to their query. By structuring educational resources and trial data to align with conversational search models, pharma businesses can better meet the immediate needs of HCPs while reinforcing their authority in the field.

Engaging with patients: Patients are increasingly turning online to understand conditions or medications, encountering overly complex or unreliable information. With SearchGPT, patients can ask questions like, “What are the side effects of my asthma medication?” and they will receive helpful, empathetic, and medically accurate responses. For pharma companies, this creates opportunities to shape the conversation around their therapies and to ensure content reflects a commitment to patient safety and education.

Engaging with internal teams: SearchGPT can also offer value for internal operations. For example, imagine your research teams using conversational AI to summarise and streamline knowledge sharing. Think of the time saved by no longer having to manually collate competitor activity or analyse drug development trends. Get answers in seconds to accelerate workflow and help your pharma business to adopt a much more agile approach to decision-making.

Key challenges to consider with SearchGPT

Moving beyond the new and shiny opportunities SearchGPT brings, it also introduces key challenges. AI-generated responses can sometimes be incomplete or inaccurate, which poses risks to compliance and trust in a highly regulated sector. As such, ensuring all of your content is verified, compliant, and properly sourced is non-negotiable.

There is also a lack of transparency in how AI summarises information, often without linking back to original sources. This makes it harder to validate or contextualise the data, which may call for closer collaboration with AI providers, and to help advocate for better source visibility and ensure your data is directly accessible to these systems.

Finally, conversational AI can reduce control over your content, in terms of how it is presented. Your marketing teams' carefully crafted messaging could be lost. To mitigate this, it is vital to actively monitor how your brand and products are being represented by SearchGPT.

Some actionable steps for pharma post-SearchGPT launch

Optimise for conversational AI: Structure your online content to ensure it is discoverable and accurately summarised by AI tools. FAQs, structured data, and concise explanations will help with this.

Focus on compliance: Work closely with your regulatory teams to ensure that all information discovered by conversational AI meets necessary legal standards.

Educate internal teams: Provide training for marketing, communications, and your R&D teams on how conversational AI is changing search behaviour, and how to plan and strategise for it effectively.

As conversational AI continues to evolve, it will undoubtedly transform the way information flows between pharma companies, HCPs, and patients. Those who adapt early will be better placed to benefit from its potential while also mitigating its risks. In the near future, we’re likely to see a hybrid approach emerge, combining the efficiency of conversational AI with the depth and transparency of traditional search engines. I would suggest this presents an opportunity for pharma businesses to lead in shaping the future of healthcare search, ensuring that accurate, trusted information remains at the forefront of healthcare decision-making.