Research finds healthcare organizations rapidly embracing AI-enabled medication workflows, while consumers and professionals continue to prioritize transparency and human oversight.
Wolters Kluwer Health today released new research highlighting a growing tension as artificial intelligence plays a greater role in medication-related workflows: healthcare organizations are accelerating AI adoption, while both professionals and consumers continue to prioritize trust, transparency and human oversight.
Nearly all healthcare professionals surveyed report their organizations are advancing toward AI-enabled medication workflows. Yet consumers remain more cautious: only 27% strongly trust automated systems to correctly flag potential drug interactions without a healthcare professional directly involved.
The findings are based on surveys of more than 1,000 consumers and 117 senior professionals representing pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), payer drug management teams, retail pharmacies and digital health technology companies.*
Survey finds growing demand for trusted medication intelligence as healthcare workflows become more automated
Among the survey results:
- Nearly all healthcare professionals (99%) report their organizations are advancing toward AI-enabled medication workflows.
- Similarly, nearly all (98%) expect their organizations’ dependence on curated and continually updated medication intelligence to increase as workflows become more automated.
- Almost seven out of 10 (68%) consumers would independently verify medication details always or most of the time if they are generated through processes using AI.
- 59% of consumers would prefer to interact with a healthcare professional when discussing their medications’ side effects.
- 57% of consumers report experiencing at least one issue related to medication information or coordination, and 51% have had delays or frustrations related to prior authorization of medications.
For PBMs, payer drug management teams, retail pharmacies, and digital health technology companies, the research findings point to the shared challenge of applying medication information consistently and transparently as workflows become more connected and AI-enabled. These organizations face increasing pressure to ensure that the intelligence underlying their medication-related decisions remains constant, reviewable and supportable.
“Healthcare organizations do not simply need more data. They need trusted therapeutic and medication intelligence that can be applied consistently across increasingly automated workflows,"
said Chris Sullivan, Vice President and General Manager, Pharmacy and Health Technology Solutions, Wolters Kluwer Health. “As AI adoption accelerates, competitive advantage will increasingly come from confidence in the intelligence underlying those workflows. Organizations need to understand where that intelligence comes from, how it is applied and how decisions by its users can be reviewed and governed."
Medi-Span trusted medication intelligence: the foundation for an AI-ready medication ecosystem
Today’s need for trusted medication intelligence extends beyond traditional drug data. Modern medication workflows increasingly require clinical and therapeutic insights, medication classification, pricing and commercial data, interoperability, and decision support to work together consistently across healthcare environments.
Medi-Span brings these capabilities together through expert-curated medication information that spans structured drug data, a proprietary Generic Product Identifier (GPI) classification system, pricing data, clinical screening, and resources designed to support AI-enabled workflows.
Altogether, Medi-Span offers a trusted foundation for users to make clinical decisions, commercial workflows, interoperability, automation, and emerging AI-enabled applications.
Medi-Span is used across the industry by PBMs, health plans, pharmacies, health systems, and healthcare technology organizations, providing a consistent foundation across an increasingly connected medication ecosystem.
Steve Wilcher, CEO at adherent360, a pharmacy technology company, commented, “AI is creating significant opportunities to improve productivity across healthcare, but speed must be supported by intelligence that teams can rely on. At adherent360, we’re applying AI across pharmacy operations to help health systems streamline clinical approval, billing and dispensing discharge prescriptions in five minutes or less with our automated kiosks." He added, “Our work with Wolters Kluwer brings trusted Medi-Span medication intelligence into these workflows, helping pharmacy teams operate more efficiently while giving our patients more convenient access to the medications they need.”
Building on more than 50 years of medication information expertise, Medi-Span continues to evolve as the AI-ready medication intelligence foundation that supports formulary, claims, pricing, dispensing, clinical, and other medication-related workflows.
Learn more about Medi-Span and medication intelligence
A new whitepaper, “Building Confidence at Scale: The Medi-Span Vision for the Intelligence Layer Beneath Every Medication Decision,” examines how fragmentation, AI adoption, and changing consumer expectations are reshaping medication workflows. It also explores how trusted therapeutic and medication intelligence can support greater consistency, reviewability, and confidence across healthcare workflows.
*Survey conducted by CITE Research, August 2026.