The Future of Service Provider Discovery & Intelligence in Pharma

Where Human Expertise and AI Converge

Artificial intelligence is transforming the pharmaceutical landscape, but when it comes to identifying, classifying, and understanding service providers, generic AI tools fall short. In a sector defined by complexity, regulation, and constantly evolving language, success demands more than automation. It requires a hybrid approach: advanced AI combined with domain-specific human expertise.

The Limitations of GenAI in Pharma

Off-the-shelf generative AI models are trained on general-purpose data and lack the depth to interpret pharma-specific terminology, taxonomies, and nuances. As a result, they struggle with:

• Identifying niche service capabilities

• Understanding evolving therapeutic language

• Interpreting unstructured provider data accurately

The risk? Inaccurate or superficial outputs that fail to meet the strategic needs of pharmaceutical decision-makers. When AI lacks pharmaceutical context, it cannot distinguish between a CRO and a medical communications agency, let alone understand what differentiates one from another.

Why Human Intelligence Still Matters

Service provider intelligence in pharma isn’t just about data - it’s about context, relevance, and strategic insight. This requires people who understand the nuances of the industry.

Experienced industry professionals are critical in designing, refining, and interpreting AI systems that accurately identify and categorize service providers. They shape ontologies, train models on real-world taxonomies, and ensure outputs reflect the true structure of pharma services, from clinical development to commercialization.

The Power of Collaborative Intelligence

The most effective systems today don’t rely solely on AI or human expertise, they combine both. GenAI is unmatched at ingesting and analyzing large volumes of unstructured data. But human insight is what transforms that data into actionable intelligence.

This is particularly vital in service provider discovery, where the goal is not just to surface providers, but to reveal capabilities, assess performance, and support informed, strategic partnerships.

Setting a New Standard for Service Provider discovery: Ekarnia’s Approach

We are redefining how the pharmaceutical industry identifies and evaluates service providers. Our AI system leverages LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and vector-based search to extract and structure over 30 critical data points per supplier, fueling a dynamic, high-resolution intelligence layer across nearly 1 million datapoints.

Our platform is shaped by domain experts with decades of pharma and agency experience. We have guided every aspect from ontology design to prompt engineering, ensuring our system reflects the language, logic, and structure of the industry to drive a high quality data output.

Moving Towards Strategic Intelligence

AI should not be seen as a silver bullet. True innovation in service provider intelligence comes from tailored systems that evolve with the industry, guided by those who understand it best.

At Ekarnia, AI doesn’t replace human expertise, it amplifies it. Together, we’re turning unstructured data into deep, strategic intelligence that transforms how pharma companies discover, assess, and partner with service providers.