TLDR
Toby O'Brien founded Dissent, a Lateral Intelligence practice. Twenty years building digital in pharma and biotech, hands on the tools, across most of the major global companies and most therapy areas. He speaks about AI from inside the work, not above it.
The talk
Invisible by default.
AI, generative engine optimisation and what happens to health and pharma brands when the machine answers instead of the search engine.
Your audiences have stopped searching and started asking. The answer arrives assembled, sourced from somewhere you did not choose, with nothing to click. We spent fifteen years learning to rank. The machine does not rank. It answers, and it decides whose answer. Most health and pharma content is invisible to it. This talk is about why, and what it takes to be seen, and some practical things everyone can take away.
Biography
I have spent twenty years practising digital in pharma. Strategy, yes, but also the build, the analytics, the compliance and the parts nobody puts in a case study. Most of it was done under someone else's name. I was the rented talent behind agency work for AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Novartis, Roche, GSK, Lilly, Sanofi, J&J and most of the rest. Award-winning work, and a longer list of failures I learned far more from.
In January 2026 I started Dissent. The job is translation: taking the data, channels and thinking an organisation already holds, turning it into a decision it can act on, then staying long enough for the learning to compound.
On AI I am neither evangelist nor sceptic. I am interested in what it changes for the people doing the work, what it quietly breaks, and where the value is showing up. It is a tool to use rather than the answer.
Background
- 01
Twenty years in health and life sciences digital, strategy through to hands-on delivery
- 02
Most major global pharma companies; oncology, rare disease, cardiology, dermatology, respiratory, medical devices and more
- 03
Award-winning delivery: PMEA, Communiqué, PM Society
- 04
Founder of Dissent, a Lateral Intelligence practice