Life sciences is heading into 2026 with a very different operating reality. Scientific innovation is accelerating, but so are pressure points: a global workforce shortage, persistent physician burnout, more complex care pathways and rising expectations for digital experiences.
For life sciences marketers, this poses a challenge: how can they engage healthcare professionals (HCPs) and other key life sciences professionals given the pressures they are under? And how can they enable their field teams and reps in the face of such changes?
Based on ON24’s work with leading pharma, biotech and medtech brands, our life sciences benchmarks and a range of external research, here are four trends we see shaping life sciences engagement in 2026.
Make sure to consider these in your marketing strategy.
1. AI‑powered education moves from pilot to standard practice
Developments in medicine have transformed healthcare across the world. However, there are simply not enough trained professionals to provide patients with the care they need. The World Health Organization estimates that the world will face a shortfall of about 11.1 million health workers by 2030. As demand for healthcare outstrips supply, national surveys coordinated by the American Medical Association and others continue to find that around half of physicians report at least one symptom of burnout, even after improvements from the peak of the pandemic.
Even so, accredited HCPs need to stay on top of research and developments, both to maintain professional status and to deliver the highest quality care to patients. Online channels have become a preferred way for them to do so, allowing them to balance their day-to-day responsibilities with continuous learning.
Against this backdrop, healthcare education and engagement is becoming a strategic lever. According to figures published by Grand View Research, the value of the global healthcare education market hit $124.71 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $387.40 billion by 2033, driven by e‑learning, AI and immersive technologies, with an expected CAGR of 13.5% from 2025–2033.
For medical affairs, commercial and digital teams, the question is no longer whether to invest in digital education and engagement. It’s how to build a connected, data‑rich ecosystem that supports HCPs, patients and internal teams across the full product lifecycle. This is where AI-powered education can help.
Generative AI is moving rapidly from experimental pilots to embedded capabilities across healthcare and medical education. The AMA’s ChangeMedEd initiative and its “master adaptive learner” framework emphasize helping clinicians become self‑directed, adaptive learners who can keep pace with continuously evolving evidence and technologies.
For life sciences companies, 2026 will be less about experimenting with standalone AI tools and more about using AI to:
- Personalize content based on first‑party engagement data from HCPs and other audiences
- Generate and adapt educational assets (for example, key‑point summaries, short video clips, knowledge checks) from approved, compliant content
- Provide adaptive learning paths that respond to an HCP’s specialty, prior behavior and knowledge gaps
On the technology side, ON24’s platform already uses first‑party interaction data to power AI‑driven content recommendations and automatically generated clips based on where engagement is highest. As shown in the 2025 Life Sciences Digital Engagement Benchmarks Report, life sciences customers generated six times more derivative content with AI in 2024 than in 2023 from their webinars and virtual events on the ON24 platform.
How life sciences marketers can respond to this trend
- Treat AI as an accelerator, not a replacement for human expertise
AI can transform lengthy, approved slide decks into adaptive digital experiences. Medical and legal experts still need to define the narrative, guardrails and scientific claims, ensuring any content is suitable for publication. A human-in-the-loop is essential. - Anchor AI on trusted, first‑party data
Engagement data captured across webinars, virtual symposia and content hubs should feed AI models and rules, so recommendations are driven by what HCPs actually do, not generic assumptions. - Personalize recommendations and design for adaptive journeys, not one‑off events
Use AI to recommend the next best piece of content, the right microlearning module or the most relevant follow‑up event based on each HCP’s journey so far.
For more information, read our article on how life sciences marketers can personalize experiences with data or download our e-book on How to Maximize Results Across the Campaign Lifecycle with AI.
2. Always‑on hubs and microlearning reshape how HCPs keep up
Clinicians are busier than ever. Workforce shortages, rising patient complexity and escalating administrative work make traditional full‑day in‑person meetings increasingly hard to attend.
A 2023 scoping review of virtual continuing medical education (VCME), covering 282 studies, found that virtual CME has grown rapidly since 2005 and accelerated markedly during the COVID‑19 pandemic. The review concluded that VCME can improve access and flexibility and is generally effective at improving knowledge and clinical practice, but also raises important equity and design challenges.
But the growth in virtual CME doesn’t mean that educational experiences need to all be lengthy sessions. Indeed, evidence from continuing education programs suggests that short, modular online activities are often associated with high uptake and completion among HCPs, especially when they are available on‑demand and integrated into clinical workflows.
For life sciences marketers and medical teams, this suggests that strategies can benefit from shifting away from one-off events and toward:
- Always‑on educational hubs that blend live webinars, virtual symposia and on‑demand content libraries.
- Short, focused modules that deliver a single learning objective in minutes, not hours.
- Simulation and scenario‑based formats that improve skills and decision‑making, supported by strong evidence for simulation in surgical and procedural training.
How life sciences marketers can respond to this trend
- Shift from event calendars to content programs
Map your therapy‑area strategy to a year‑round content hub that mixes live and on‑demand formats for HCPs, internal teams and distributors. - Design for different engagement depths
Combine short snackable updates such as Key Moments video clips with deeper, case‑based sessions and certificate‑bearing CME to meet different needs and time constraints. - Use analytics to refine the mix
First‑party engagement data from ON24 webinars, virtual events and content hubs can reveal which lengths, formats and topics drive the highest completion, questions and follow‑up actions. Use this to optimize current programs and plan future content — while also providing reps insights into exactly how individual HCPs, distributors and decision makers have been interacting.
3. Connected systems turn first‑party data into real‑time insights
As healthcare becomes more connected, the amount of data generated — from electronic health records to medical devices and digital tools — continues to rise. Deloitte notes that the future of health will depend on interoperable data that can move freely across systems, underpinned by open platforms and emerging technologies that fit into everyday operations.
A recent Financial Times analysis estimates that the global “smart hospital” market — covering AI, IoT, robotics and connected platforms — will reach about $148 billion by 2029 as hospitals invest to improve efficiency and patient outcomes. While the opportunity is huge, hospital and medtech leaders consistently cite challenges integrating with EHRs, protecting patient data and fitting technology into existing clinical workflows.
For life sciences marketers, this has two implications:
- First‑party engagement data stands to become more valuable
The creation and collection of data within healthcare settings is perfectly complemented by the interaction data that life sciences marketers can access through online activities. As HCPs, patients and field teams interact with webinars, virtual congresses and content hubs, they generate rich behavioral data: questions asked, polls answered, resources downloaded, time spent in specific sessions and more. - That data needs to flow into the broader go‑to‑market workflows
Engagement insights are most powerful when integrated with CRM systems (for example, Veeva or Salesforce) and field tools, and when they inform omnichannel orchestration. Such data can be particularly useful when paired with data on treatment usage, prescribing history and patient needs. For example, a spike in engagement with content that aligns to epidemiological data for a particular region could be used to reassign marketing activity and field reps to that territory.
ON24’s life sciences customers are already passing engagement data into their CRM and marketing automation platforms to surface next‑best actions, guide field force follow‑up and enrich account and territory planning. This approach is highlighted in ON24’s work with companies such as UCB, which uses ON24 data integrated with Salesforce and Veeva to support a mature omnichannel engagement strategy.
Going forward, life sciences firms are likely to take further steps in passing insights and recommended tasks to reps, enabling them to have higher-quality conversations. This trend was highlighted by pharmaceutical consultancy Impatient in the report Death to Digital: The Birth of New Field Roles in Pharma, with the emergence of a data-enabled reps termed ‘Engagement Agents’.
Source: Impatient Health Report
How life sciences marketers can respond to this trend
- Prioritize interoperable platforms
When assessing engagement technology, look for native integrations and APIs such as those offered by ON24. This will enable first‑party engagement data to flow into CRM, data warehouses and field tools. - Define data models for promotion around clinical questions
Work with medical, commercial and analytics teams to define what signals matter (for example, guideline‑related questions, interest in specific patient subtypes, repeated viewing of a mechanism‑of‑action asset) and how they map to marketing actions and field activity. - Use AI and analytics responsibly and proactively
As data becomes more granular, governance and transparency become critical. Collaborate with compliance, privacy and legal teams to ensure that data use and AI‑powered recommendations meet local regulations and company policies. Ask your current and prospective technology suppliers how they meet such standards.
4. Outcomes, efficiency and automation redefine success measures
With budgets under pressure and scrutiny on promotional and medical spend, life sciences organizations must increasingly show how engagement is driving meaningful outcomes. This topic has previously been discussed by life sciences marketers on a past ON24 webinar.
Fortunately, the evidence base for continuing medical education (CME) is substantial. A synthesis of systematic reviews published in the Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions concluded that interactive CME is more likely than not to improve physician performance and, in many cases, patient health outcomes, especially when programs are interactive, use multiple exposures and focus on real‑world practice change. The benefits of CME can therefore act as a powerful incentive in encouraging not just attendance at online events, but also to design experiences that are interactive and involve participation — even if such participation is asynchronous.
It also provides a reason to invest in appropriate platforms and tools: when education and technology are well‑designed, they can both improve clinical performance and free up time for patient care.
But what about those working within life sciences firms? For those working in research, developments such as AlphaFold by Google DeepMind provide powerful examples of the potential of AI. Even so, analysis by McKinsey shows that deploying generative AI within commercial teams is the second only to research as a cited top priority.
Several ON24 customers also provide examples of how technology is being used to improve marketing effectiveness and the results they’ve seen.
| Life sciences firm | Outcome from ON24 technology |
| Thermo Fisher Scientific | Used AI-derived content to increase contribution to revenue by 2.5X. |
| NRC Health | Vastly improved efficiency — reduced program set up time by 70% for the marketing operations team, enabling a 40% increase in events run. |
| CSL Behring | Switched from manual processes, enabling faster time-to-market and more than 100 net-new HCP customers. |
For life sciences marketing, these forces are likely to converge into three priorities to improve outcomes:
- Measurement beyond vanity metrics
Attendance and other basic satisfaction scores are no longer enough. Life sciences marketers will need to move toward richer measures such as engagement depth, knowledge signals, intent‑to‑change behavior, follow‑up actions and, where appropriate and permitted, longer‑term prescribing or utilization patterns. - Automating routine tasks to save time and scale
AI and workflow automation are increasingly used to repurpose event content, generate follow‑up emails, tag assets, summarize Q&A and surface insights — so teams can focus on strategy, stakeholder relationships and evidence generation. - Linking HCP engagement to product and patient outcomes
By integrating engagement data with commercial and medical analytics, teams can start to understand how education, peer‑to‑peer engagement and patient support correlate with adoption, adherence and real‑world outcomes, while respecting compliance and data‑privacy requirements.
How life sciences marketers can respond to this trend
- Redefine success metrics
Align medical, commercial and analytics stakeholders on a shared scorecard that goes beyond registrations to include engagement depth, knowledge signals and downstream actions. - Automate where possible, govern where necessary
Use AI to summarize events, propose next‑best content and support internal reporting, while maintaining clear human oversight on anything that touches scientific claims or compliance. - Close the loop with evidence
Where regulations and data access permit, work with analytics and HEOR teams to connect education and engagement initiatives with downstream measures of practice and patient outcomes.
Preparing your life sciences engagement strategy for 2026
Taken together, these trends point to a clear direction for life sciences:
- Use AI to power engagement and educational content, but it ground it with trusted sources and human oversight.
- Move to always‑on content hubs and microlearning as HCPs expect flexible, high‑quality education that fits into their busy schedules.
- Develop and optimize technology integrations to turn rich behavioral data into meaningful insights and orchestrate go-to-market strategies.
- Take advantage of automation to improve efficiency and outcomes for both medical and commercial teams.
The organizations that win will be those that can connect these elements into a coherent, compliant engagement strategy that serves HCPs, patients, internal teams and partners.
ON24 is working with leading life sciences companies worldwide to build intelligent engagement programs that combine live, simulive and on‑demand webinars, virtual events and content hubs — all powered by rich first‑party data and AI.
If you’re planning your strategy and would like to see how peers are evolving their approach, explore ON24’s latest resources and see how ON24 propels life sciences outcomes forward.