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4 minute read
Patient chart audits (PCAs) have long been a cornerstone of pharmaceutical market research. They quantify real-world treatment patterns, patient mix and segmentation, treatment sequencing, market share dynamics, and competitive positioning.
Chart audits tell you what happened. They rarely tell you why. In markets where prescribing decisions involve nuanced trade-offs - patient complexity, aesthetic versus functional treatment preferences, prior therapy failures, switching hesitancy, surface-level metrics are no longer enough to drive confident commercial strategy.
This is the problem Arcutis Biotherapeutics set out to solve. And the approach they took — partnering with ZoomRx to deploy Patient Scribe, a voice-powered conversational PCA, offers a practical blueprint for how pharma market research teams can unlock the clinical reasoning that traditional methods consistently miss.
The Research Challenge: Beyond Surface Metrics in Dermatology
Arcutis Biotherapeutics already had a strong quantitative data foundation guiding its commercial strategy across dermatology indications. However, the team wanted deeper visibility into the clinical reasoning behind prescribing decisions, insight that traditional data sources rarely capture.
The goal was to conduct a patient chart audit capable of:
- Uncovering hidden insights shaping the market
- Understanding unarticulated gaps in clinical decision-making
- Generating actionable positioning and messaging guidance
- Capturing intelligence on competitor strategy
The challenge was methodological. Standard PCA formats — structured questionnaires with checkbox-driven data entry — carry well-documented structural limitations that make these goals difficult to achieve at scale.
The Structural Problem with Traditional PCAs
Traditional patient chart audits face several structural challenges that can limit the depth and reliability of insights.
HCP Burden: High cognitive load and survey fatigue limit participation. Rigid survey formats force complex clinical scenarios into checkboxes, stripping away nuance and encouraging simplified responses.
Incomplete Insights: Traditional PCAs capture what happened, such as the therapy prescribed or treatment sequence but rarely explain why. Clinical reasoning, switching triggers, and real-world access barriers are difficult to capture in structured survey fields.
Data Quality Concerns: Two persistent questions remain: Are physicians reviewing charts during surveys? And do complex questionnaires push HCPs to report only the simplest cases? Both can skew results away from real-world clinical complexity.
Missed the live session? Watch the on-demand recording to see Patient Scribe demonstrated with real dermatology cases.
The Solution: Patient Scribe
ZoomRx developed Patient Scribe, a voice-first conversational PCA platform built around a simple idea: the survey becomes a conversation.
Instead of navigating screens and selecting from predefined survey options, physicians describe patient cases in natural dialogue. Conversational AI guides the discussion through a structured flow while probing intelligently to capture additional clinical context.
Responses are automatically structured and coded for analysis, allowing research teams to maintain statistical rigor across large datasets while capturing richer qualitative insights.
Key elements of Patient Scribe:
- Natural conversation format replacing checkbox-driven surveys
- Intelligent AI probing with guardrails
- Deterministic survey flow ensuring consistent data coverage
- Automated data structuring for quantitative analysis
- Statistical validity maintained across large sample sizes
- Plaque Psoriasis
- Atopic Dermatitis
- Seborrheic Dermatitis
- Elle Park, Market Research & CI Lead at Arcutis Biotherapeutics
- Hrishikesh Thakur, Account Director at ZoomRx
This approach can be layered onto an existing quantitative data foundation, as it was in the Arcutis pilot, to add qualitative depth to insights that already quantify market dynamics.
For a broader look at how conversational AI is being applied to patient chart audits across therapeutic areas, including an oncology pilot in DLBCL, see our earlier case study on AI-moderated conversational PCAs.
The Arcutis Pilot: Scope and Design
The Arcutis pilot focused on inflammatory dermatoses, covering approximately 500 patient charts across three indications:
- Plaque Psoriasis
- Atopic Dermatitis
- Seborrheic Dermatitis
The study also examined treatment patterns across four drug classes, with data collection completed in approximately eight weeks.
Importantly, the objective was not to replace Arcutis’s existing quantitative data foundation. Instead, the pilot aimed to answer the questions that quantitative datasets often leave unresolved:
What clinical reasoning sits behind the treatment decisions reflected in the numbers?
What real-world factors influence prescribing behavior but rarely appear in structured survey responses?
What Patient Scribe Delivered: Three Dimensions of Improvement
The Arcutis pilot demonstrated how a conversational PCA approach can address several long-standing limitations of traditional chart audits.
Higher HCP engagement
The voice-based format reduced the cognitive burden typically associated with structured surveys. Physicians could describe cases naturally rather than translating clinical complexity into survey fields. As a result, 82% of participating HCPs rated the experience as highly engaging, helping improve participation and completion rates.
More representative patient cases
Because physicians were speaking through cases rather than navigating rigid forms, they were more comfortable sharing complex or long-standing patient histories. Six out of ten HCPs reported providing richer clinical detail compared with traditional PCA formats, resulting in a dataset that better reflected real-world dermatology practice.
Greater clinical context and candor
The AI-led conversational format also encouraged more candid discussion of treatment decisions, including therapy failures, discontinuations, and access barriers. This helped surface the clinical reasoning behind prescribing choices — insights that structured chart audits often struggle to capture.
Together, these improvements enabled Arcutis to move beyond surface-level metrics and uncover the decision drivers shaping treatment patterns across dermatology indications.
What the Data Unlocked: Strategic Intelligence for Arcutis
The pilot added qualitative depth to Arcutis’s existing quantitative foundation, helping uncover the clinical reasoning behind prescribing decisions. By capturing the “why” behind treatment choices including barriers, decision context, and real-world patient complexity, the research generated insights that were more actionable for commercial strategy.
The conversational format also produced richer narrative insights, making findings more credible and easier for stakeholders to interpret and apply.
One operational takeaway: conversational PCAs generate large volumes of unstructured data. Planning the right backend infrastructure early is essential to efficiently analyze and extract value from these insights.
The Case at Intellus Worldwide 2026
The results of the dermatology pilot were presented at Intellus Worldwide 2026, held at the Westin Chicago North Shore on March 19.
The session — “How AI Voice-Powered Chart Audits Uncover Insights Traditional Methods Miss” — featured:
- Elle Park, Market Research & CI Lead at Arcutis Biotherapeutics
- Hrishikesh Thakur, Account Director at ZoomRx
The presentation walked through the dermatology pilot results and included a demonstration of Patient Scribe using a psoriasis patient case.
Watch the Full Session
The on-demand recording of the Intellus 2026 session is now available. Watch ZoomRx and Arcutis Biotherapeutics walk through the dermatology pilot findings and explore how AI-powered conversational PCAs bridge qualitative depth with quantitative rigor across hundreds of patient charts.
Access the On-Demand Recording →
If you're evaluating whether conversational AI is the right fit for your next PCA, explore ZoomRx's Patient Chart Audit approach or connect with the team to discuss your specific research objectives.
Learn more about ZoomRx Patient Chart Audits →
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