AI Should Give MSLs More Time to Be Human
How AI can reduce repetitive work and give field medical teams more time for scientific judgment, trust, relationships, and meaningful conversations.
An interesting paradox surfaced during the Field Medical conversations at Fierce Pharma Week 2026: the more capable AI becomes, the more valuable human interaction may become.
Medical Science Liaisons shouldn't spend their best hours searching systems, assembling information, documenting routine activity, or manually connecting insights across teams. Yet that is exactly how much of the role still functions today, with scientific expertise competing for time against administrative overhead.
An AI-enabled stack working alongside MSLs around the clock changes that balance. Before an interaction, it can bring together relevant scientific and engagement context. Afterward, it can help capture insights and identify patterns across interactions. It can connect those insights back to Medical, Commercial, and other appropriate teams within established governance, and help prepare the field team for the next meaningful conversation.
The objective isn't to replace the MSL — it's nearly the opposite. Machines should handle machine work so humans have more time for human work: scientific judgment, trust, relationships, nuance, and conversation. In an AI-enabled organization, those capabilities don't become less important. They become the differentiator.
For Medical Affairs leaders, the test of a good AI deployment in field medical isn't how much documentation it eliminates — it's how much more time it returns to the actual scientific exchange.
This piece draws on the field-medical panel at Fierce Pharma Week 2026, featuring Patrina Pellett, Annie Herrington (Pfizer), Chuck Berds, Nita Thingalaya (Novartis), and Badal Shah.
