Integrating Medical Content and Medical Information: Insights from Industry
When it comes to digital transformation, you often hear about the “why” – the need to keep pace with the evolving preferences of patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs). What’s typically missing from the conversation is the “how” – practical stories that detail new technology implementation and changing business processes.
I recently had the opportunity to see these perspectives converge in a discussion with the director of medical affairs at a global biopharma and Jennifer Riggins, partnership and technology strategist at phactMI. They explored industry trends impacting medical content and medical information and how these insights have translated into measurable progress.
Digital is on the rise in medical information
Medical information teams are adopting new digital channels — not just for convenience, but because HCPs and patients increasingly prefer these platforms. “My mantra is ‘be where they are and go where they go.’ If it’s a reasonable place for an HCP to be, let’s go there,” says Riggins.
As new channels emerge, medical information teams are creating and delivering content in new ways. “For years, medical information teams have delivered content in the same way,” says Riggins. “It’s time to move beyond the ‘we’ve always done it this way’ mindset and adapt to what our customers are asking for. We’re exploring new formats to make content more interactive and concise,” she adds.
Recent benchmarking data from phactMI highlights notable progress and investment in making medical information teams and resources more accessible in the digital space. This data underscores the growing interdependencies between medical content and medical information, and why content models must adapt.
A global biopharma defines a path to unified content
For the director of medical affairs and her colleagues, staying competitive in the digital space meant going back to the basics. To set the right foundation, they addressed key pain points, particularly how a lack of global standards impacted their content model.
“Working in a global environment, it’s easy to create unnecessary silos across regions or markets. We evaluated our processes — how content is created, tagged, and managed,” says the director of medical affairs. She and her team took note of global inconsistencies that challenged content management and reuse. “We were using 87 different document types, subtypes, and categories,” she says.
They undertook transformational projects in partnership with Veeva Business Consulting to harmonize global document taxonomies and DAM capabilities across Veeva MedComms and Veeva PromoMats. “We brought in stakeholders from all different regions and changed the taxonomy entirely,” says the director of medical affairs. As a result, the company reduced document types from 87 to just 8, with universal definitions aligning all regions and appropriate subtypes.
The company’s global alignment helped streamline processes, reduce inefficiencies, and provide quicker access to approved materials. The director of medical affairs says, “Creating universal standards and definitions that everybody agrees on across regions has a trickle-down effect. It drives global consistency, reduces duplication, helps with reuse, and most of all makes content easier to find.”
Optimizing interdependencies with a centralized approach
Integrating medical content and medical inquiry processes helps medical information teams find content quickly and disseminate it within a single environment.
“Timing is everything in medical information. We can’t afford to lose any time trying to find content,” says the director of medical affairs. “An integrated approach adds structure, supports faster responses, and ensures that the content delivered is accurate, consistent, and aligned with regional and global standards.”
Finding the most relevant content for HCP interactions relies on searchability – enabling quick, easy access through accurately tagged data. “With the high volume of inquiries that medical information manages, having centralized, organized, and tagged content is critically important,” says Riggins. “Aligned metadata can empower search capabilities and personalize interactions with providers.”
Building a fully connected medical affairs ecosystem
For those beginning a similar journey, the director of medical affairs recommends a focused start. She says, “Understand your key pain points, what needs to be fixed, and what needs to be addressed, rather than take everything on at once. Keep it simple, start small, and then build.”
Now that integrated tools are accessible, Riggins advises others to think beyond siloed solutions and build connections across people and processes. She says, “Don’t look at technology in a silo. Think across the entire medical affairs ecosystem, consider content creation, content storage, workflow, fulfillment, CRM, and medical inquiry management.”
The director of medical affairs adds, “Many stakeholders within an organization are looking for content across the system. It’s not just the medical information team, it’s medical science liaisons, pharmacovigilance, and external agencies. It’s important to understand your user community before you build out your framework.”
Where possible, Riggins says, “Anticipate upstream and downstream impacts of taking a tool away or adding a tool in. When you map out that framework, you’ll be able to identify where you need to plug and play different pieces of the puzzle.”
Learn more from phactMI about leveraging technology to elevate medical information practices.