Pharma brands compete in a fast, crowded space, where timing and relevance drive impact. Next Best Action (NBA) in healthcare marketing is the discipline of using data and decisioning technology to determine the single most valuable thing to do next for a specific healthcare professional (HCP), patient, or account一and doing it through the right channel, at the right moment.
NBA isn’t about automating outreach for its own sake. It’s about transforming how brands think, moving from static campaign calendars to dynamic, context-aware engagement that reflects real-world signals.
And the timing couldn’t be more critical. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 50 novel drugs were approved in 2024, a reminder that launch competition has never been fiercer. With more therapies, more indications, and faster competitive responses, the brands that adapt in real time are the ones that win attention, access, and adoption.
Often, traditional engagement models struggle to keep pace with today’s market velocity. Fixed journeys and mass messaging fail when formulary decisions, coverage updates, or data shifts occur in real time.
NBA changes that dynamic. By continuously listening for key events, such as a formulary win, an HCP opening an email, or a patient refill delay, the system automatically identifies the next best action and routes it accordingly.
That might mean:
NBA brings precision and orchestration to every touchpoint, making every action more relevant, compliant, and measurable.
Data-driven engagement is accelerating across life sciences, reshaping how brands connect with HCPs. Next-generation customer engagement platforms were valued at $2.37 billion in 2024 and are projected to grow at a whopping 10.13% CAGR from 2025 to 2033, reflecting the industry's focus on integrated decisioning and orchestration capabilities that enable Next Best Action.
These platforms deliver impact, in part, through targeted personalization. According to ON24's 2024 Life Sciences Digital Engagement Benchmarks, life sciences companies saw a 22% increase in call-to-action engagement when digital experiences were personalized. Meanwhile, the 2025 Healthcare Marketers Trend Report from healthcare marketing publication MM+M / Swoop found that 76.1% of marketers plan to increase their social media engagement with HCPs this year.
This convergence of personalization effectiveness and expanding channel complexity makes orchestration essential. NBA provides the framework that ensures every channel adds precision—not clutter.
Every effective Next Best Action program runs on a simple framework that connects data, decisioning, and delivery.
Importantly, with respect to governance and compliance, every rule, trigger, and message is MLR-approved with full audit trails. Consent management and content controls keep programs compliant and trusted.
NBA provides pharmaceutical marketers with data-driven insights to guide precise and timely engagement throughout the brand lifecycle. From launch through maturity, NBA aligns brand strategy and promotional execution around real-time market signals to help ensure every HCP interaction is relevant, coordinated, and compliant:
NBA unites insights and execution, enabling coordinated, compliant marketing actions that maximize impact.
Next Best Action programs must operate within pharma’s strict regulatory and ethical framework, where privacy laws, data consent, and promotional boundaries govern every interaction with HCPs and patients. Building compliance and transparency into the foundation of NBA helps ensure automation enhances, rather than risks, organizational integrity and trust.
This includes:
When designed with these safeguards in place, NBA not only meets compliance standards but also builds confidence—reinforcing trust through precision, relevance, and control.
The success of Next Best Action depends on how effectively marketers can connect data signals to measurable outcomes. Strong measurement frameworks show how data-informed actions influence HCP engagement, prescribing behavior, and overall campaign performance.
Core measurement dimensions include:
Holdout testing (using control groups to isolate new-action impacts) and incremental lift analysis (quantifying the marginal effect of NBA versus baseline performance) provide the evidence needed to measure its real contribution versus standard campaign activity.
Even sophisticated NBA programs can miss their mark without the right structure and controls in place. They require a balance of automation, compliance, and human oversight to sustain accuracy and trust.
Common pitfalls include:
NBA delivers sustained value when technology, governance, and collaboration operate in sync, turning insight into coordinated, compliant marketing performance.
PDQ Communications approaches NBA as a strategic discipline, not simply a technology implementation. This mindset shapes how Precision Path, PDQ’s NBA tool, transforms segmentation strategy into coordinated execution that delivers measurable impact.
Here are five principles that help drive results:
With over more than 20 years of healthcare marketing expertise, PDQ delivers the confidence that comes from flawless execution: higher open rates, reduced internal lift, faster speed to market, and stronger HCP engagement.
PDQ provides the execution infrastructure that transforms NBA from concept to reality. Our team manages deployment complexity, maintains compliance integrity, and delivers transparent performance metrics, helping ensure your campaigns achieve the precision and coordination that NBA demands.