• by Les Luchter , Staff Writer, May 29, 2025

Spoiler alert: At the end of this column, previous MediaPost writer (and current medical marketing writer) Larry Dobrow’s name will make its first appearance on these pages since 2017. To learn how that ties in with AI and Ostro, start here from the beginning…

How do pharma companies use AI in their marketing?

For the answer, we turned to tech vendor Ostro after being pitched that “life sciences firms like AstraZeneca and Sanofi have started leveraging this technology to amplify their brand messaging for medications, personalize content, and build trust with patients and providers for stronger, more effective marketing.”

After just six years, Ostro is already working with half of all top pharma companies, co-founder Dr. Chase Feiger, M.D., told Pharma & Health Insider. Ostro is the only AI marketing technology “purely focused on life sciences,” he added. “We’ve never actually lost a deal to a competitor.”

As we had suspected, though, confidentiality agreements precluded Dr. Feiger from identifying any firms using Ostro besides Sanofi and AstraZeneca. Ostro’s website, though, cites Johnson & Johnson, Abbvie, Hims & Hers, Mount Sinai and Johns Hopkins, among others.

Specific examples? Here’s all that’s available, thanks to PM360, which made the info public through an award late last year:

Sanofi, whose drug Tzield fights Type 1 diabetes, used Ostro’s platform for an unbranded “Screen for Type 1” campaign, which PM360 named one of its “Innovative Consumer Tech & Wellness” winners.

To increase awareness of early screening for Type 1, which affects 1.45 million Americans, and also drive screening rates, the campaign took a two-pronged approach. “One is to connect patients with live diabetes counselors who can answer questions and provide answers about the screening options available,” explained Dr. Feiger. (Sanofi saw “a significant rise in user engagement after the launch of live diabetes counselors,” PM360 reported.)

“The second is a tech-enabled virtual assistant solution, available both for patients and caregivers around the clock,” Dr. Feiger said, with resources including a Doctor Discussion Guide and a Type 1 Risk Quiz.

For Sanofi, downloading that doctor discussion guide could be termed a “high-value action,” and Dr. Feiger revealed that among all Ostro users, “on average, we’ve seen a two to seven times increase in high-value actions accessed by patients and doctors” across both branded and unbranded campaigns.

In addition to Sanofi and AstraZeneca, we also know that Havas is using the technology for unidentified agency clients because the agency last month announced a “strategic investment and partnership” with the AI firm.

“The ability to support and provide personalized content to the end user requires the agency of record who will actually go through the process of creating that content,” elaborated Feiger.

What exactly does Ostro provide to its clients?

There’s one product called Tailor for reaching healthcare professionals (HCPs), and another called Navigate for reaching consumers. The former, per Ostro’s website, will “expand your brand's reach and influence by leveraging AI-tooling to frictionlessly provide HCPs with PRC [Promotional Review Committees]-approved resources, immediately.” The latter will “go way beyond ‘ask your doctor about…’ with a personalized, pre-script journey… that gives them the information they need—when and how they desire it—to feel confident they’re making the right choice with your product.”

Late last year, the owners of Ostro also launched a publication titled Kinara, whose three editors are Dr. Feiger, another Ostro co-founder Ahmed Elsayyad, and Larry Dobrow, who after leaving MediaPostin 2017 went on to become editor in chief of Medical Marketing & Media.

Kinara, which covers “essential topics in pharma marketing, medical affairs, healthcare policy and commercial innovation,” has no advertising or subscriber fees, indeed “zero monetization strategy,” according to Dr. Feiger.  “It’s more an editorial platform to elevate really important pieces of science  happening with the industry.”

Committed to “journalistic integrity,”  Kinara will never cover Ostro, although AI itself is not off limits, Dr. Feiger claimed. And no content is AI-generated, he said, assuring me that Larry Dobrow is still a real person.

As is this columnist.