New Technology Shifts the Landscape of Medical Content Management

Over the course of my 15-year career in medical content management, I’ve seen companies struggle with the complexity of disjointed systems and information siloes. However, I have seen a major shift – driven by new and better technology that provides a single source of content from creation through distribution.

In life sciences, medical content management has two distinct, but related, processes. There is the content creation/review/approval process and the dissemination of that information through one or more channels. Companies often used multiple systems, sometimes connected and sometimes not, to handle these processes. Having multiple versions across different systems resulted in serious inefficiencies and increased compliance risk. If a medical standard response letter needed updating, for instance, it would be copied to several different systems and manually re-copied if changes were later made.

With new technology and capabilities, medical content can be managed and controlled within one unified system. Technology has evolved from siloed database systems that loosely integrate, to cloud-based systems that control information from start to finish. Life sciences companies can now take a best-of-breed approach with robust, industry-specific cloud solutions that enable:

• A single source of truth for document control and compliance on a global basis
• Faster review and approval of content with the ability to hold online meetings and make annotations directly to documents under review
• Compliance at every level, including digital approval signatures
• The ability to see where reference materials have been used across multiple pieces of content in order to facilitate updating if they change
• The ability to withdraw outdated content across multiple channels of communication

Going forward, as life sciences companies consider how to handle medical content, both the content management and the transactional use cases need to be aligned. Look for best-of-breed solutions that have open integration features and allow you to connect your content with any and all channels. This will reduce risk of disseminating incorrect content, ensure compliance, and allow document access through a single source of truth.

Dan Glass leads Vault MedComms strategy