Clinical teams have access to a wealth of data, most of it structured and peer-reviewed, from which they're able to mine insights about how a given medicine performs in a defined patient population under controlled conditions. Real-world evidence (RWE), accumulated via electronic health records, patient registries and insurance claims, extends the clinical side’s data advantage even further.
The question RWE helps answer is how a drug works in the real world. Until recently, commercial teams did not have a similar way of determining whether the market understood the value of their therapies, and if not, where they were falling short.
Now they do. The next era of life sciences commercialization will be defined by Commercial Evidence, which compiles not what brands are broadcasting but what markets are actually saying. It consists of the precise language patients or HCPs use to ask questions, frees commercial groups to operate like clinical teams, making decisions on the basis of what the evidence shows.
With Commercial Evidence, teams are tapping into information that’s more consequential: A compliant, usable record of what HCPs, patients, caregivers and field teams are actually saying at all stages of the process.
Why the Old Commercial Playbook Falls Short
The traditional brand playbook is currently inadequate. The infrastructure underlying many commercial programs was created when the overarching goal was to reach as many physicians as possible with a consistent message, measuring success by the reach and frequency. Even today, many commercial teams are still counting clicks and impressions, then inputting the data into dashboards that offer tidy, snapshot views.
This system fails today’s teams because website clicks and a few rigid drop-down menus cannot capture the nuance of real conversations.
"When you are driving a paradigm shift in a therapeutic category, legacy data is a rearview mirror," says Graham Goodrich, Chief Commercial Officer at Apnimed, Inc. "Success relies on identifying precisely where clinical inertia and patient friction live in real time. Moving from traditional metrics to Commercial Evidence gives us the insights needed to remove barriers to treatment."
Powered by voice agents that convert spoken notes into text and agents that can analyze free-text fields, Commercial Evidence changes this.
For years, some of the richest signals in healthcare went uncaptured. When patients interact with a care navigator or physicians pose questions, these natural, unscripted exchanges generate the language that structured systems were never designed to record: An untrackable flow of dialogue revealing what people actually think, ask, and worry about.
How Conversational AI Unlocks the Signal
By interpreting conversations at scale on brand websites and email, Conversational AI transforms that lost dialogue into a compliant, analyzable record – and, in doing so, provides actionable Commercial Evidence. What was once dismissed as too subjective, messy or risky to inform crucial decisions is now a usable asset, reflecting a broader shift in how the industry regards open text.
Now commercial teams can see what physicians and patients are asking. They can base their decisions on what HCPs, patients, caregivers, field teams and other stakeholders across the medical marketing spectrum are actually saying and doing.
No longer do they have to make educated guesses about why a message failed to land, or why a physician may be reluctant to prescribe a product with credible data. They can determine where in the patient journey confusion or frustration leads to them leaving a site without an answer, as well as where HCP objections don’t find their way into a rep’s dashboard.
Commercialization is a chain of conversations: A physician objection in the field, reimbursement confusion in the support channel, patient questions in service interactions. Once open text is classified, summarized and compared at scale, those fragments move from anecdotes to evidence.
"For too long, commercial teams have operated under a top-down, broadcasting mindset," says BJ Jones, Chief Commercial Officer at NewAmsterdam Pharma. "Commercial Evidence flips that dynamic, forcing an organization to shift toward a true listening culture. When you align your strategy around the actual language patients and physicians use when they are stuck, you build a patient-centric commercial model."
Putting Commercial Evidence to Work
Commercial Evidence should be applied across multiple places in the commercialization journey. Prior to launch, it can show whether the market actually understands your story in the language the market uses. During launch, it can surface recurring issues by specialty, region or channel before they progress to underperformance. After launch, it can identify where education is failing, where onboarding breaks or where access barriers persist.
For brand teams, that exposes critical content gaps, helping them understand exactly what patients and HCPs are searching for but cannot find. Reps can arm themselves with direct evidence of what a specific HCP was researching prior to a visit. Patient support teams can fine-tune their messaging to address the exact verbiage used by patients to show where they don’t have complete information.
Commercial Evidence means more data, yes, but it also means more actionable knowledge and visibility, which ultimately gives commercial teams the ability to consider evidence of misunderstanding, hesitation or friction. It’s pushing commercial teams closer to the standard the clinical teams have experienced for years.
Written by Chase Feiger, MD