Beyond Clicks: How to Turn Personalised Video into Real HCP Conversations
Pharma wants 1-to-1 relevance for every HCP, but field teams can only reach a fraction of them, and digital campaigns often mean a patchwork of tools and integrations. AI video now makes personalisation at scale technically easy. Making it relevant, compliant and measurable is the harder part.
Luis del Pozo has been Managing Partner of Abrantia Health in Madrid since 2016. His work focuses on how pharma companies reach HCPs and pharmacies, through field teams, contact centres and digital channels, and more recently through personalised AI video, where his team has developed the platform Vidoku. I asked him what it really takes.
Karsten: IQVIA's 2025 ChannelDynamics survey of more than 33,000 HCPs found that face-to-face still accounts for 40% of their preferred interactions. Which content fits personalised video, and which still needs a person?
Luis: Face-to-face interactions are irreplaceable for deep clinical debates, handling complex objections, or building foundational trust. The KAM or MSL is there to read the room and adapt in real time.
However, we need to view this on a spectrum. We should differentiate between KAMs and MSLs, and within their roles, distinguish between routine touchpoints, like reminders or minor product updates, and complex new content, such as new therapeutic guidelines or late-breaking abstracts. As complexity increases, so does the need for physical interaction.
Personalised video fits naturally into the spaces between those physical visits. It’s ideal for one-minute post-call summaries. Video doesn't replace the KAM. It carries the conversation forward between visits, allowing the HCP to consume high-value, tailored information on their own schedule. And, of course, we also have the tactical use of video to reach those doctors who fall outside the "Tier A" targets, often due to geographical constraints.
Karsten: Field teams only visit a fraction of their accounts, especially in pharmacy. Is personalised video mainly a way to reach the accounts nobody visits?
Luis: Partly, Karsten, but looking at it only as a tool for unvisited accounts is a mistake. Let me give you an example involving Spanish pharmacies. A multinational company told me that after investing heavily in a new OTC product launch, their sell-out figures were falling short of expectations. The reason? The key differences between their new product and existing competitors hadn't been properly explained to the pharmacy employees at the counter, only to the pharmacy owners.
We ran a targeted "sell-out" campaign, scaling to more than 10,000 recipients across 4,500 pharmacies. Delivering a couple of short, personalised videos explaining the product's added value was enough to lift unit sales by 15% within three months. Why? Because the pharmacy staff finally had a fresh, clear narrative to help them sell the product effectively.
Karsten: Imagine a KAM logs a visit in Veeva and the HCP automatically receives a personalised follow-up video. What has to be in place, in the CRM and in the field team, for that to work?
Luis: First, the CRM needs highly accurate segmentation. Specifically, you need a high completion rate for the data fields that will act as variables within the video script, along with up-to-date GDPR consent for digital communications. Second, every single piece of content must be MLR (Medical-Legal-Regulatory) validated. Third, the technical integration, using webhooks and automated workflows, must trigger the video generation seamlessly. Finally, the field team needs to trust the process. You have to ensure they always feel in control of their customer relationships, rather than feeling bypassed by automation.
Illustration: BEYOND CLICKS - The groundwork behind real HCP conversations
Karsten: Pharma wants every HCP to feel addressed personally, but also wants tight control over every message. How do you balance personalisation with consistency?
Luis: By combining modular content with strict pre-auditing guardrails. The core message and the visual templates are fully MLR-approved in advance. The AI only alters specific, locked-down variables, such as the HCP's name, their specialty, or a pre-approved data point relevant to their profile.
A key safeguard is automated MLR compliance, for example ensuring every generated piece of content carries its corresponding MLR approval code. This ensures that whatever the AI generates has been validated against approved standards before it ever reaches the HCP's inbox.
Karsten: When a key clinical paper is published, how quickly can Medical Affairs now get a personalised update to HCPs across several countries and languages, and how does medical review keep up?
Luis: What used to take months can now take days. With AI video generation, you record the core English master once. The platform then translates it, clones the voice, and adapts the lip-syncing for local languages across Europe.
But let’s be realistic: translating scientific text requires absolute semantic accuracy and medical terminology adapted to each specific country. This is usually where MLR bottlenecks happen. However, because the core claims are locked, local MLR teams can run a much narrower review focused on localised language accuracy, rather than re-reviewing the entire strategic campaign from scratch.
Karsten: A video campaign generates a lot of engagement data, from view duration to downloads and contact requests. What do companies actually do with those signals?
Luis: These signals fall into two groups. The first is traditional KPIs, based on standard formulas focused on the conversion funnel.
The second is where it gets interesting. High-intent signals should trigger a human follow-up. Right after watching the video, a physician can click a button on the landing page to request a call from an MSL or KAM. The request is logged in the CRM instantly and routed to the right owner. In pharmacy, a purchasing manager can place an order straight from the landing page, and the sales rep then manages it from the CRM, calls the pharmacy or visits.
Beyond these two groups, engagement data also improves the campaign while it is still running. Drop-off rates from similar campaigns can show which scenes to shorten or cut. And if a campaign goes out in four waves, engagement from the first three can suggest delaying the final wave to maximise impact.
Karsten: Looking ahead, as AI increasingly suggests the next best action, what metric will tell you a campaign changed HCP behaviour, and not only clicks?
Luis: Clicks and view durations are vanity metrics. They tell us there is attention, but not necessarily intent. Behaviour change is measured by what happens in the real world after the video is watched. Do we see an increase in sales? Is there a spike in inbound queries to Medical Affairs from that targeted segment?
Ultimately, we look at sales and prescription data for shifts in prescribing habits or the faster adoption of a new indication in the months following an omnichannel campaign. The true metric of success is when an HCP transitions from being a passive viewer to initiating a high-value interaction with a KAM.
Karsten: Many thanks, Luis, for sharing such practical insights.
What stands out is that the technology is no longer the bottleneck. The real work sits in the groundwork: clean CRM data, valid consent, locked MLR-approved content and field teams who trust the process. Just as important, personalised video works best as a complement to the field. It carries the conversation between visits and reaches the people a visit never does, like the staff at the pharmacy counter.
How is your organisation using personalised video today, and where have you seen it change HCP behaviour rather than just generate clicks?
Source: IQVIA, From Preference to Practice: Understanding the Evolving Channel Preferences of Healthcare Professionals, November 2025.
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