How to make sure your healthcare business is visible in AI search

Healthcare professionals and patients are increasingly turning to AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity to ask complex, nuanced health related questions. This could be treatment guidelines, through to symptoms and product recommendations. These tools aren’t just search engines as they generate answers to those very specific and personal questions. That shift brings both risk and opportunity for healthcare brands.
Are your therapies, services or products being included in these answers? How do you know if AI is actually crawling your website? Are your competitors being mentioned instead? And what can you do to influence that?

In the short video below, Varn Health’s CEO Tom Vaughton shares some early steps healthcare marketers and med comms teams can take to strengthen their presence in AI-driven search.
Watch to learn more about our AI Visibility Framework and how it applies to the healthcare space.

Search in healthcare is changing

Until recently, most digital search strategies focused on ranking in Google. But AI search changes the rules. These tools don’t display a list of links; they generate a single, conversational answer by analysing a range of online content and data. That content is selected based on clarity, trustworthiness, and perceived authority.

In a highly regulated sector like healthcare, where accuracy, trust, and compliance are critical, this shift brings a new challenge: ensuring your brand is present and then correctly represented when it counts.

Three practical focus areas for better AI search visibility

Based on our work with healthcare clients and what we’re seeing across platforms, here are three priority areas to consider:

1. Understand your current visibility

Do AI tools mention your product, brand, therapy area or patient resource? Are you being overlooked in favour of competitors? Establishing a baseline, across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others is the first step. Varn Health’s AI Search Visibility Framework and tailored benchmark reports for pharma and med comms clients can help uncover where you stand today.

2. Strengthen trust and authority signals

AI platforms seek out reliable sources. For healthcare, this means publishing content that is:

• Factually robust and regularly updated
• Authored or reviewed by subject matter experts
• Clearly associated with a trusted brand or institution

These signals increase your chances of being included in AI-generated responses, where trust is everything.

3. Adapt your content for AI

Well structured content is easier for AI to understand and therefore cite. That includes:

• Simple, direct language without oversimplifying clinical content
• Clear headings, definitions, and question-led formats
• External references and evidence where appropriate

This doesn’t just support discoverability it also supports patient and HCP understanding.

Preparing for this new future of search

Search is evolving fast, and the healthcare brands that adapt early will be better placed to lead the conversation. If you want some advice from our expert team around a search visibility and performance audit, a visibility benchmark against your competition, or a clear strategic plan to get AI visible, get in touch here.