Physician profiles might not grab headlines, but they’re one of the most critical elements of a healthcare organization’s digital presence.
They can be a powerful first impression of a provider — and of your organization. By presenting important details about doctors’ expertise and approach, profiles help patients make confident choices about their care.
They also play a crucial role as online search trends continue to evolve.
Driving patient decisions in the age of AI
Traditionally, search engines have focused on providing links to websites that answer users’ questions. For healthcare organizations, this has meant building robust, keyword-optimized web content — such as condition and treatment pages — that aims to capture traffic and ultimately convert users into patients.
But things are changing in the world of search. AI-driven tools like conversational search and featured snippets have started delivering instant answers to user queries, often bypassing the need to click through to a website. Web traffic is becoming less important in turning online visitors into active patients.
In this new landscape, physician profiles are more important than ever. While condition or treatment pages focus on education, physician profiles cater to patients who are ready to act. They’re a gateway to booking an appointment, finding contact information, reading reviews, or checking availability.
By crafting actionable, trust-building physician profiles, healthcare organizations can make them a steppingstone for patient conversion.
Over the years, we’ve written thousands of profiles, supporting large-scale projects for major academic medical centers. Along the way, we’ve learned a few lessons that can help streamline the process and maximize the impact of these profiles.
Here’s what we’ve discovered.
#1: Efficiency is key.
When you’re working with hundreds — or even thousands — of providers, interviewing each one for their profile is simply not feasible. Instead, lean on what’s already available.
Start with the physician’s CV to create a draft. You may still need to get additional details from the physician, such as areas of specialization, but a CV-first approach respects their time and keeps the process efficient.
For high-profile or especially visible providers, consider conducting an interview to gather personal quotes for a longer profile — or even planning video content to accompany their profile.
For most physicians, though, starting with the CV is the gold standard. Let them review the draft, make edits, and approve it. This keeps the process collaborative without being burdensome.
#2: The point of a template is to save time — not stifle creativity.
Using a template is central to our scalable approach to profiles. When you provide a clear framework for your writers and editors, you enable them to make decisions more easily. A template can help you maintain editorial standards across hundreds of profiles.
Good templates also allow for flexibility. You may choose to standardize a few aspects of someone’s bio — education, certification, areas of specialization — while allowing for some customization. For instance, some providers might be involved in noteworthy research, while others have taken on leadership roles. You can accommodate these shifts while maintaining a cohesive structure.
One last thing to note: A template should be a guide. That means that if a physician wants to write their own bio or deviate from the template during the editing process, you can let them — so long as it aligns with your organization’s tone and style.
#3: Optimize for visibility.
Physician profiles are often the first point of contact for prospective patients searching for a specific doctor or service. Make sure they’re optimized for search engines by:
- Using schema markup to provide structured data
- Incorporating high-quality images of the physician
- Including relevant keywords, especially for branded queries like “Duke Cancer Center.”
- Cross-linking to the relevant conditions, treatments, and clinics
Optimized profiles not only rank better but also drive traffic to your site and guide patients to take the next step (see #6).
#4: Patient needs should guide your approach.
Although physicians, students, and other healthcare professionals often search for provider profiles, your primary audience is patients and their families. Your profiles should emphasize patient-friendly details such as office location, areas of expertise, and approach to care.
If your organization is an academic medical center, your provider may be involved in research and education activities. While this is important, don’t let it overshadow what patients want to know: Can this doctor help me?
Knowing your audience requires thinking about patient demographics, patterns, and preferences. For example, do you have a large population of non-native English speakers? Include the languages spoken by each physician.
#5: Personal details build trust and connection.
Physician profiles aren’t just a list of credentials — they’re an opportunity to humanize your providers. Adding a personal touch can go a long way in building trust.
Consider asking physicians to share a sentence or two about their lives outside of medicine. Hobbies, favorite books, or a brief anecdote can make the profile more relatable and memorable.
These details don’t have to be elaborate; even a small glimpse into their personality can make a difference.
#6: Profiles should be part of a larger content strategy.
Physician profiles shouldn’t exist in isolation. Link them to related blog posts, treatment pages, and patient testimonials to create a web of interconnected content.
For example, a cardiologist’s profile might link to a blog post on heart health, a patient story about a successful procedure, and a treatment page for arrhythmias. This content ecosystem keeps users engaged, increases time on site, and boosts conversions.
Don’t forget clear calls to action. If a doctor is accepting new patients, include a “Schedule an Appointment” button. If not, guide users to another action, such as learning more about their department or services.
Pro tip: Always include whether the physician is accepting new patients. If they’re a hospitalist or a specialist who only sees referrals, make that clear to readers.
#7: AI isn’t there yet.
While it would be nice to have AI handle the more routine aspects of profile writing, we’ve found that it’s not yet ready to fully replace human writers and editors.
We’ve experimented with incorporating AI into the process of writing and editing physician profiles, including fine-tuning an AI model. AI often excels in specific tasks like:
- Formatting long lists of data, such as publications or awards
- Light editing tasks, such as catching minor errors or rephrasing awkwardly written sentences
- Comparing documents or content
However, when it comes to parsing complex CVs or crafting personalized, non-templated content, the technology falls short. CVs are notoriously inconsistent in structure, and AI often struggles to extract nuanced information or interpret ambiguous details, leading to inaccuracies or omissions.
Despite these current limitations, we predict that with ongoing advancements in natural language processing and machine learning, it’s likely that AI will one day handle these tasks with precision.
Until then, writing physician profiles remains a skill that requires human judgment, a nuanced understanding of audience needs, and a collaborative approach with providers — elements that no algorithm can yet replicate.