Pharma companies may soon have to explain not just how much they spend on marketing, but how and why they spend it. In a recent reply in the Parliament, the government highlighted the strengthened Uniform Code for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP), first notified in 2024 and amended in 2025, which requires pharmaceutical companies to constitute Ethics Committees for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (ECPMPs), appoint ethics officers, submit annual disclosures of marketing expenditure and strengthen oversight of interactions with healthcare professionals. While the framework is aimed at improving transparency and accountability, it could also trigger a review of how pharmaceutical brands communicate with doctors, patients and the wider healthcare ecosystem.
For an industry where doctor engagement has traditionally been the cornerstone of marketing, the changes raise an important question: If conventional promotional practices come under greater scrutiny, what does the next phase of pharma marketing look like?
Beyond compliance
Industry observers believe the revised code is less about restricting engagement and more about changing the standards that govern it.
“The revised UCPMP is unlikely to trigger an overnight transformation, but it does represent a significant shift in the direction of pharmaceutical marketing,” says Veda Halve, Assistant Vice President, Primus Partners. “As marketing practices become more visible, companies will increasingly have to justify promotional investments based on scientific value, educational outcomes and measurable business impact, rather than the scale or frequency of engagement.”
In other words, success may no longer be measured by how often companies engage doctors, but by whether those engagements create meaningful clinical value. That could push marketers towards evidence-led communication, medical education and scientific dialogue rather than promotional visibility alone.
Changing the doctor conversation
Doctor engagement is unlikely to disappear. Instead, experts expect it to become more structured and transparent.
“As a practising physician, I welcome this, and I’d say most doctors quietly do,” says Dr Aisshwarya Panddit, Medical Director and Founder, NOVEA Aesthetic and Regenerative Clinic. “Scientific engagement, evidence and education will continue, and they should. What gets filtered out is anything that could ever make a patient wonder whether their doctor’s advice was influenced. And that protects the single most valuable asset in medicine: the trust a patient places in the person treating them.”
That shift could encourage pharmaceutical companies to view doctors less as commercial audiences and more as scientific partners, investing in credible clinical data, continuing medical education and knowledge-sharing initiatives.
The rise of patient-centric marketing
If doctor-focused marketing becomes more regulated, patient-facing communication could receive a larger share of marketing budgets.
Disease-awareness campaigns, patient education, adherence programmes and digital health platforms are expected to gain greater importance, particularly as patients become more informed about treatment options.
Halve believes this transition is already taking shape. “Medical education, real-world evidence, disease awareness initiatives and digitally enabled scientific engagement are expected to receive greater strategic focus. The Code therefore represents more than a compliance exercise; it encourages a shift towards marketing models that are better aligned with long-term credibility and patient outcomes.”
Dr Panddit sees the same trend from the clinic as well as on social media. “What that community shows me every single day is why this shift matters: people are hungry for trustworthy health information,” she says. “If stricter oversight moves budgets toward genuine patient education and disease awareness, the industry gains something advertising never bought it—believability.”
However, she cautions that education cannot become another form of promotion. Patients, she says, are quick to distinguish between authentic medical guidance and branded messaging.
A new marketing mix
For agencies working with pharmaceutical brands, the change is already showing up in the kind of briefs they receive. “As an agency that works closely with pharmaceutical and healthcare brands, I’d call this the most significant reset pharma marketing in India has seen in a decade,” says Masuma Siddique, Founder and Chief Strategist, InkCraft Communications. “The centre of gravity now shifts from access to narrative: brands will have to be known for their science, their outcomes and their credibility in the public domain, not just their presence in the doctor’s chamber.”
Siddique believes the shift is already visible. “The marketing mix is tilting from below-the-line prescriber engagement toward public-facing, patient-led communication,” she says. She cautions, “Patient education cannot become a promotion wearing a lab coat. The brands that will win are those that invest in education which stands on its own.”
The shift is also creating more space for digital healthcare and patient education. Saloni Paliwal, Co-founder, Voy India, says digital care can play a larger role as healthcare communication becomes more patient-centric. “Digital healthcare was already growing, but the pandemic significantly accelerated acceptance of telemedicine among both patients and clinicians. We believe digital care can make specialist-led obesity treatment easier to access while giving patients more continuity, education and support throughout what is usually a long-term health journey.”
For Paliwal, greater transparency could also change how healthcare companies build credibility. “Trust will increasingly come from what a healthcare company can demonstrate rather than how visibly it can promote itself,” she says. “For doctors, that means credible scientific information, clarity around clinical evidence and communication that respects professional independence. For patients, it means being equally clear about treatment choices, expected outcomes, limitations, costs and the support available throughout their care journey.”
Transparency as a brand asset
For marketers, perhaps the biggest takeaway from the revised UCPMP is that compliance and communication may no longer be separate functions.
“Compliance and effective communication are set to become increasingly interconnected rather than competing priorities,” says Halve, adding that companies embedding transparency, scientific rigour and ethical conduct into their commercial strategies will be better placed to build long-term credibility.
“Transparency is how trust is built, not what it’s traded against,” says Dr Panddit, arguing that investments in scientific exchange, medical education and health literacy will ultimately prove more valuable than conventional promotional tactics.
As disclosure becomes mandatory and scrutiny increases, credibility could become a bigger competitive advantage for pharma companies. The UCPMP may not end doctor engagement, but it could change what effective marketing looks like, with greater emphasis on transparency, scientific evidence and meaningful communication.
