Why Medical Device Marketers Need to Optimise for Gen AI Discovery. Now.

We’re on the brink of a major shift in how Healthcare Professionals (HCPs) find out about new tools and technologies.

Although in-person events continue to be popular with Medical Device marketers, we've noticed a shift over the last few years- ie that HCPs are increasingly relying on digital channels and social media for their medical education.

The most important gateway to this online world has historically been Google. And Google is indeed still the number 1 way of starting an online journey.

But this is changing.

Quickly.

Today, we're increasingly using embedded AI answers (eg Gemini within Google Search) or going direct to Gen AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude to answer our questions.

These platforms deliver what is called zero click answers. Ie, there's no click to a website to get the information required.

And this is a problem or opportunity - depending on how you look at it.

Zero click answers can mean zero visibility

When AI tools answer clinical or strategic questions without citing your product or service, you’re invisible. If your brand doesn’t show up, someone else’s probably will.

We're already seeing MedTech companies experience a decline in website visits due to this behaviour change and it isn't surprising.

Physician use of AI is rising fast

From 2023 to 2024, physician use cases for AI tools doubled. Like the rest of us, HCPs see increasing benefit in using AI and are becoming comfortable with using it every day.

And the tech giants are prioritising AI initiatives over everything else. Apple’s own SVP of Services, recently confirmed AI-powered search will be built into Safari, with iOS 19 potentially making this the default for over 1.5 billion devices by September 2025.

The implications for medical device and digital health brands are huge.

What determines if you show up

Large Language Models (LLMs) don’t rely on live web searches. They learn from publicly available information, and only the most accessible, authoritative sources make it in.

To increase your AI visibility, your digital presence needs to follow two principles - which might feel familiar (if you know about ranking well on Google):

1. Be found easily

• Ensure your site is fast, mobile friendly and crawlable by AI bots such as GPTBot and PerplexityBot
• Use structured data such as FAQ schema, glossaries and product schemas to help AI extract answers
  
  

2. Build natural authority

• Show E-E-A-T - that stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. That's the principle that Google launched many years ago for effective SEO, and it applies identically to AI results.
• Secure backlinks from trusted domains such as PubMed, Wikipedia, medical news outlets and journals. (Wikipedia is increasingly important according to many sources including Nature).
• Be referenced in peer reviewed publications where LLMs are likely to train.
  

The SparkLife approach to making your brand AI visible

To help healthcare and MedTech companies show up more consistently in Gen AI answers, we recommend a three-phase strategy:

Phase 1 – Technical and accessibility

• Audit site speed (especially mobile), mobile performance and AI bot access (including robots.txt and sitemap setup). AI bots refer to mobile sites, not desktop versions.
• Ensure fast, crawlable pages that work on mobile and are visible to AI crawlers
  
  

Phase 2 – Structured data

• Apply rich schema to your website key pages and easy-to-read summary content (schema is a way of annotating your content for search engines)
• Build FAQs on your site to match natural question patterns that AI engines favour
  
  

Phase 3 – Authority building

• As with SEO, Gen AI platforms measure trustworthiness based on the opinion of other partners in the form of in-bound links or "backlinks".
• So, secure backlinks from high-authority domains
• Publish or support peer-reviewed studies, then amplify them via medical press and Wikipedia edits.

The game has changed. Optimising for Gen AI is similar to SEO optimisation but with some important updates. It’s about making sure your medical device or digital health brand is part of the clinical conversation.

If you want to stay visible when clinicians ask critical questions, now is the time to act.

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