What supports increasingly complex medication decisions?

Fragmentation, pricing complexity, consumer expectations, and AI adoption are reshaping medication decision-making. Payer drug management teams, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), retail pharmacies, and digital health technology companies need more than just drug data, medication content, or alerts to keep pace with today’s complex medication workflows.

Wolters Kluwer surveys of both healthcare professionals and consumers reveal a defining tension: Healthcare organizations are rapidly advancing their adoption of AI-enabled medication workflows. Meanwhile, consumers remain open to AI-enabled medication experiences, but their confidence is more measured when automation involves less direct professional involvement.

Medi-Span – trusted across healthcare for more than 50 years – has evolved beyond traditional drug data to meet the needs of increasingly connected and automated medication workflows. It provides the trusted therapeutic and medication intelligence layer that helps healthcare organizations apply medication information more consistently across connected workflows, strengthen oversight, and scale with confidence. The “therapeutic” dimension reflects an expanding range of treatment types that healthcare organizations must evaluate and manage, including areas such as cell and gene therapies and pharmacogenomics.

The opportunity now is to extend that trusted intelligence across the increasingly connected systems, experiences, and technologies shaping the future of medication-related work.

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Building confidence at scale: The Medi-Span vision for the intelligence layer beneath every medication decision
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Medication access is increasingly digital and complex

Healthcare consumers now encounter more interaction points for medication access than ever before: retail pharmacies, virtual care platforms, health plan programs, specialty channels, digital health tools, and AI-enabled experiences. This diffusion creates more handoffs, pressure points, and complexity for the organizations responsible for keeping medication information consistent, transparent, and defensible.

Consumers’ levels of participation and trust in these disparate channels and experiences can vary, but the importance of winning their confidence is undeniable. Studies show that consumer trust in medications is positively associated with medication adherence. A 2025 review found that one of the factors shaping trust in digital healthcare is consumers’ perceived accuracy of the data they obtain from digital health sources.

Healthcare consumers’ confidence in medication-information consistency:1

Less than half (46%) of consumers have used digital health tools for medication management
The majority (70%) of those who do use digital health tools are very or extremely confident that medication information is consistent across channels
Only 43% of digital health tool nonusers express confidence in medication-information consistency

Consumer comfort in medication access channels

Healthcare consumers surveyed say they are very or somewhat comfortable with these medication delivery channels:1

Graphic with pie charts depicting: Consumer comfort in medication access channels. Healthcare consumers surveyed say they are very or somewhat comfortable with these medication delivery channels. 86% retail pharmacy. 78% health plan, insurance, or prescription benefit programs. 59% home delivery or mail order pharmacy. 54% virtual care or telehealth. 35% automated kiosks or self-service pickup.
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    • 86% retail pharmacy
    • 78% health plan, insurance, or prescription benefit programs
    • 59% home delivery or mail-order pharmacy
    • 54% virtual care or telehealth
    • 35% automated kiosks or self-service pickup

This is significant because 75% of healthcare professionals surveyed2 say consumer expectations have a major or significant impact on their organizations’ medication-market strategies.

Healthcare organizations must support traditional, digital, and hybrid experiences simultaneously to cover various consumer needs and wants. This may be especially important for consumers over age 65, who represent only 16% of digital-tool users, and those managing more complex medication regimens, who also represent 16%.1

The growing risk posed by fragmented medication information

Fragmented medication information is no longer just an operational problem. It is a growing risk to decision consistency and defensibility, with effects that can reach consumers through care coordination delays, repeated requests for medication information, conflicting guidance, and uncertainty about which source of medication information is correct.

These gaps and instances of friction occur when medication information and logic are inconsistent, incomplete, or difficult to apply. Beyond creating inconveniences for both healthcare professionals and consumers, this inconsistency can weaken the defensibility of decisions, reduce operational efficiency, and make it harder for organizations to scale medication-related workflows and support reviewable decision-making processes with confidence.

Graphic of bubbles with information on: Fragmentation is visible in the consumer medication experience. 31% experience delays because organizations were not coordinated. 26% had to clarify information between organizations. 20% had to provide the same medication information multiple times. 16% have received conflicting medication information. 9% have been unsure which source was correct.
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    Fragmentation is visible in the consumer medication experience.1

    • 31% experience delays because organizations were not coordinated.
    • 26% had to clarify information between organizations.
    • 20% had to provide the same medication information multiple times.
    • 16% have received conflicting medication information.
    • 9% have been unsure which source was correct.

Surface confidence versus underlying fragmentation

Generally positive perceptions of medication-related processes can coexist with friction beneath the healthcare experience.

Healthcare consumers:1

  • 55% are confident in medication information consistency
  • 57% have experienced at least one issue with medication information and coordination

Healthcare professionals:2

  • 81% are confident in their organization’s drug data
  • 40% acknowledge significant risk from fragmentation
  • 34% struggle with inconsistency across partner organizations
Female doctor checking male patient while writing with pen and clipboard in hospital room

Without a consistent foundation of trusted medication and therapeutic information to support connectivity and coordination both within an organization’s various functions and between an organization and its ecosystem partners, fragmentation can continue to create gaps that may surface at organizational handoffs – disrupting the workflows of healthcare professionals, the experiences of consumers, or both.

Healthcare AI explosion: Raising the standard for confidence in medication-related decisions

In healthcare, there is no longer a question of if AI. It is now a discussion of where, how, and how much.
Pharmacist holding a clipboard, talking with a customer at the pharmacy desk
  • 99% of healthcare professionals report strong advancement or rapid acceleration toward AI-enabled medication workflows2
  • 88% report their organizations investing in AI-enabled workflow capabilities2

Consumer attitudes remain more measured:1

  • 43% see potential value from the addition of AI-driven automation to their medication interactions
  • 27% strongly trust automated systems to flag potential drug interactions without direct professional involvement
  • 59% prefer interacting with a professional when discussing medication side effects

Consumers continue to expect professional involvement and verification, while healthcare professionals are emphasizing the vital role of human reviewability, traceability, and governance:2

  • 99% of professionals say trust and validation are prerequisites for scaling AI
  • 99% say medication-related decisions must be explainable, reviewable, and defensible
  • 91% rate human reviewability as very or extremely important

AI can scale inconsistency just as easily as it can scale efficiency, if the intelligence beneath it is incomplete, unstructured, or difficult to review. When the underlying intelligence layer provides expert-curated content structured for AI-enabled or digital workflows, it can help make medication-related processes more repeatable, traceable, and reviewable while supporting organizational governance policies.

Healthcare connectivity is key to addressing long-unresolved medication challenges

Even amid an ecosystem-wide digital transformation, longstanding challenges involving affordability, medication availability, prior authorization, refill management, and coordination continue to affect the stakeholders and workflows that shape medication decision-making.
More than half (51%) of consumers have experienced prior authorization delays or frustrations1
53% of healthcare professionals say inadequate interoperability is a barrier to AI implementation2

When teams within organizations and players across the healthcare ecosystem interpret and apply medication information differently, unresolved and complex challenges become harder to solve. Connectivity becomes key for medication workflows. That is likely why supporting more consistent medication information across workflows emerged as the most frequently anticipated role for therapeutic and medication intelligence among professionals surveyed.2

But connectivity between digital workflows and stakeholders is only a partial step. As information and logic move across organizations and workflows, they must remain consistent and accountable in order to meaningfully impact the existing communication gaps and coordination issues with which healthcare professionals routinely struggle.

The Medi-Span vision: Helping healthcare organizations scale with confidence

For more than 50 years, Medi-Span has supported healthcare workflows, including the clinical screening and embedded drug data used within EHRs and other healthcare applications to assist clinicians and pharmacists with medication-related decisions. That experience supporting medication intelligence at the moments when decisions happen provides important context for the Medi-Span vision.

The Medi-Span vision extends therapeutic and medication intelligence across an evolving treatment landscape and an increasingly connected ecosystem of clinical, business, and technology workflows. It is designed to help healthcare organizations meet professional and consumer expectations by supporting confidence in medication-related decision-making and enhancing consistency across workflows and experiences.

Across commercial healthcare, Medi-Span supports distinct operational and strategic needs:

  • Digital Health Technology: Build medication-aware products with structured medication intelligence.
  • Payer Drug Management: Support coverage, formulary, utilization, pricing, and reimbursement workflows.
  • PBMs: Apply benefit, claims, pricing, and coverage logic more consistently across products and systems.
  • Retail Pharmacy: Support dispensing, screening, medication review, and customer interactions while preserving pharmacist judgment.

How we do it:

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Building trusted medication workflows for the future

Healthcare professionals are clear on their top priorities as they adopt AI-enabled medication workflows. When asked to select the most important consideration as AI adoption increases, healthcare professionals prioritized:2
36% - the largest group - say they want greater confidence in the underlying therapeutic and medication intelligence
23% want stronger governance and reviewability
Only 9% thought having more medication data was most important

Combined with Wolters Kluwer’s broader clinical intelligence ecosystem, Medi-Span is uniquely positioned to help healthcare organizations connect medication, clinical, operational, and AI-enabled workflows through a trusted and consistent intelligence foundation.

Building your medication workflows with confidence

Are you ready to advance your digital and AI-enabled medication workflows? First, evaluate your medication information resources to assess if they can:

  • Apply medication information consistently across internal and external workflows.
  • Preserve source integrity, context, and intended meaning as medication information moves through systems.
  • Trace, review, and explain how medication logic is applied.
  • Maintain professional judgment and organizational accountability as workflows automate.
  • Scale digital and AI-enabled innovation without also scaling inconsistent or fragmented information and workflows.

Payer drug management teams, PBMs, retail pharmacies, and digital health technology companies need more than drug data or alerts to keep pace with today’s complex medication workflows. Medi-Span supports these organizations with expert-curated therapeutic and medication intelligence that can help healthcare organizations reduce complexity, support more efficient and consistent workflows, strengthen transparency and oversight, and enable AI-supported innovation. The opportunity ahead is to make medication intelligence more useful, connected, and accountable wherever medication-related work happens. This is the Medi-Span vision: a trusted intelligence layer beneath every medication decision, supporting confidence at scale.

Explore the complete findings

Building confidence at scale: The Medi-Span vision for the intelligence layer beneath every medication decision
Download Whitepaper

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How can Medi-Span help you scale with confidence?

Speak with a specialist to explore how Medi-Span can help healthcare organizations reduce complexity, support greater connectivity, and scale AI-enabled innovation with trusted therapeutic and medication intelligence.
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  1. Medication Delivery Consumer Healthcare Survey – 2026. CITE Research for Wolters Kluwer Health. September 2026. All Respondents (n = 1,016); Ever Used a Digital Health Tool: Yes (n = 468), No (n = 548).
  2. Medication Delivery Commercial Healthcare Professionals Survey – 2026. CITE Research for Wolters Kluwer Health. September 2026. N=117.
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