Insights from AXS25: How data, analytics, and AI are shaping the specialty pharmacy market

The Definitive Healthcare team was excited to attend this year’s Asembia AXS25 Summit in Las Vegas—an industry-defining event that brought together leaders across specialty pharmacy, pharma, and healthcare technology.

As always, the event delivered an incredible mix of strategic insight, emerging trends, and real-world conversations shaping the future of specialty pharmacy.

Below are some of our key takeaways from the summit and what they might mean for the future of the specialty pharmacy landscape.

Data is more important than ever for specialty pharma leaders

At AXS25, a consistent theme across sessions and conversations was the growing pressure on life sciences and specialty pharmacy stakeholders to better understand how patients move through the healthcare system—and where they face obstacles to access or adherence.

One area of focus was payor mix analysis. Understanding a provider or organization’s payor distribution is helpful not only for forecasting, but also for identifying where access challenges may be most acute. For example, a patient population that skews toward Medicaid may require different patient support programs or prior authorization strategies than one dominated by commercial payors. As cost pressures and coverage complexities grow, this type of insight is foundational to successful market access and service line planning.

Another area that generated strong interest was the ability to map treatment pathways. Stakeholders want to know:

• Where in the care journey patients are initiating new therapies
• What specialties or provider types are involved at each step
• Where and why patients are dropping off therapy or failing to start

This visibility enables commercial teams to understand how and when to intervene, whether that means educating prescribers, reducing administrative burdens, or enhancing patient engagement. More importantly, it helps connect real-world patient experiences with strategic decisions, such as transforming anecdotal insights into scalable, repeatable actions.

Also top of mind was the enduring importance of reference and affiliations data. As provider landscapes grow more complex—with more integrated delivery networks (IDNs) and group purchasing organizations (GPOs)—it’s increasingly difficult to know who influences prescribing decisions. Accurate affiliations data allows companies to:

• Understand physician-hospital relationships
• Identify key opinion leaders within a system
• Map influence chains for coordinated outreach

Without this level of clarity, commercial teams risk wasting resources or missing high-impact opportunities to educate, inform, and support.

Fortunately, we’ve got you covered. With our View Product Suite, you can access deeper insights about hospitals, health systems, GPOs, physicians, affiliations, and much more, so your teams can understand your area of the market inside and out, find new opportunities for growth, and get your treatment or device into the hands of the people who need it most.

The growing need for predictive analytics

Another important theme that surfaced during AXS25 was the growing demand for predictive analytics in specialty pharmacy.

The ability to risk-profile patients and identify who is most likely to face barriers to adherence or adverse events opens the door to more proactive, personalized care. By layering demographic, clinical, and behavioral data, pharmacies can predict which patients are most at risk for abandonment, nonadherence, or complications—and intervene before issues escalate.

But predictive analytics doesn’t just enhance patient care, it also helps optimize operational efficiency. Specialty pharmacies can use these insights to prioritize outreach efforts, allocate clinical resources more effectively, and reduce the administrative burden on already stretched care teams. Instead of reacting to missed fills or worsening conditions, they can shift to a model that anticipates needs and engages patients at the right moment.

AI is bringing big benefits to the specialty pharma sector

Of course, it would be remiss of me not to mention how artificial intelligence is causing big waves across the specialty pharmacy landscape.

ASX25 attendees expressed optimism about AI’s ability to accelerate complex processes like prior authorizations, benefit verifications, patient onboarding, and follow-up care. For specialty pharmacies in particular, where speed and precision are critical, AI presents a real opportunity to eliminate manual bottlenecks and improve patient experience.

In our discussions with healthcare executives and from the sessions we attended, it became clear that AI-driven tools are being looked at to:

• Find patients who are at high risk of nonadherence before issues arise
• Identify social determinants of health and other clinical barriers that could impact therapy completion
• Monitor therapy progress in real-time
• Analyze vast datasets to support the creation of more impactful strategies

But alongside this promise came a shared sense of caution. A recurring theme was that regulatory frameworks are struggling to keep pace with AI’s rapid evolution. Other leaders voiced concerns about biases in algorithms, the lack of transparency in AI models that don’t explain how decisions are made, and risks related to handling personal and protected data.

The major takeaway? Preparing for the AI-powered future of healthcare means investing in responsible, strategic implementation today. Doing so will enable organizations to be better positioned to compete and lead.

Learn more

If AXS25 made one thing clear, it’s this: Data without context is little more than noise. The specialty pharmacy landscape is only going to become more complex and competitive (really this is true for all of healthcare), so organizations need partners that can help them not just collect and analyze data but translate insights into actionable strategies.

At Definitive Healthcare, we’re committed to helping our clients get real, clear, understandable insights across the healthcare industry. Whether that means finding gaps in patient care, enhancing orphan drug or medical device availability, or refining your go-to-market strategy, we have your back.

If you’d like to see how our data products and analytics can help support your organization’s specialty pharmacy strategy, sign up for a free trial today.