7 Steps to Accelerating MLR: How Moderna Launched Veeva AI for PromoMats

While the life sciences industry recognizes AI’s potential, many biopharmas don’t know where to start to achieve measurable, lasting value. Unfocused AI pilots, overly complex products, or solutions that are not fully integrated into a user’s daily tasks lead to poor adoption, low satisfaction, and limited return on AI investments.

To overcome these challenges, Veeva is building agentic AI directly in the core of the Vault Platform and embedding industry-specific agents deeply within Veeva applications including Veeva PromoMats. This unique architecture directly optimizes processes and transforms how people work and collaborate to help realize the value of AI.

Moderna became the first company to go live with Veeva AI for PromoMats. The biotech shared its experience getting started with AI in medical, legal, and regulatory (MLR) processes to accelerate the content lifecycle. Moderna’s journey provides a clear blueprint for other biopharmas to adopt AI and quickly realize its benefits, leading to faster delivery of compliant treatment information for healthcare professionals (HCPs) and patients.

Industry-specific agents redefine content review

As the demand for content increases, MLR review is often viewed as a bottleneck in content delivery. AI is moving from experimental to tangible, delivering practical value in the MLR space. By eliminating repetitive, manual, and administrative tasks, these highly skilled professionals can focus on higher-risk content and improve quality and compliance.

Content leaders are partnering with Veeva to build an industry solution that transforms MLR for life sciences. Findings from the Veeva AI for PromoMats focus group — including leaders from 10 biopharmas — indicate that leaders expect 38% of the MLR process to be AI-driven by 2028. They identified speed and compliance as the two most-anticipated benefits.

The first Veeva AI agents for commercial content are now available in PromoMats. Quick Check Agent scans content using editorial, brand, market, channel, and compliance guidelines to address issues before MLR review. Content Agent provides context-aware insights into document text and images, answers questions, summarizes content, analyzes visuals, and draws from Quick Check Agent to assist with document review.

Jason Benagh, global marketing operations director at Moderna, was part of the focus group and an early adopter of Veeva AI for PromoMats. He shared his experience introducing agentic AI in Moderna’s MLR processes and his team’s key learnings.

“Being part of the Veeva AI for PromoMats focus group was enlightening. It was great to help shape the product and be heard.” – Jason Benagh, Global Marketing Operations Director, Moderna

Moderna’s blueprint to get started with AI in MLR

Moderna’s MLR transformation project with Veeva AI for PromoMats provides a blueprint for other biopharmas embarking on their AI journey. Here is a seven-step guide based on the company’s insights and best practices:

1. Adopt a humanistic mindset

Moderna operates with a digital-first mindset, encouraging employees to reimagine how they work and leverage AI to maximize efficiencies. However, realizing AI’s full value is ‘30% about the technology and 70% about people and process’. This approach views AI as a tool to amplify human work, not replace it.

This mindset ensures AI is embedded in the user’s daily processes as an assistant, keeping the central role of human judgment in compliant processes. For example, Quick Check Agent performs a comprehensive pre-submission check and flags spelling errors and compliance issues, such as overstated efficacy claims. The reviewer maintains final accountability, choosing which suggestions to apply.

2. Define a clear, strategic vision

Moderna’s north star in modernizing its MLR processes was clear: to enable its small, lean MLR team to handle increasing content volume without adding headcount. However, they waited until the technology was practical, affordable, and easy to implement before introducing AI. Moderna saw the opportunity in Veeva AI for PromoMats to:

• Improve the quality of materials prior to review.
• Increase efficiencies in a lean team to do more with the same resources.
• Focus on strategic, high-impact activities.

“We expect faster approvals and shorter cycle times, but the real key metric is delivering better content.” – Jason Benagh, Global Marketing Operations Director, Moderna

3. Set realistic expectations and KPIs

When getting started with Veeva AI, Moderna defined what success would look like. The team set realistic KPIs based on:

• Short-term qualitative metrics: reviewer trust, usability, and acceptance.
• Long-term quantitative metrics: process efficiency, time savings, and accuracy.

Moderna acknowledged that success comes from small, cumulative wins, not instant, ‘rocket ship’ transformation. The willingness to take risks to try something new enables fearless pivoting if a project does not live up to expectations.

4. Gather early user feedback

Moderna involved MLR reviewers early and shared how their input shaped Veeva AI agents, increasing trust in the new tool. They found that different reviewers use the same agent for unique, high-value tasks, such as using Content Agent to generate alternative compliance language and also to provide summaries. In addition, the team learned that involving external agencies early is critical because their working methods (e.g., how they upload files) impact the quality of the AI’s results.

5. Study the roadmap and adapt

Content leaders don’t just demo the product, they study the roadmap and continuously adjust. Moderna encouraged flexibility, recognizing that the technology and its internal processes will mature over time.

Optimal AI performance relies on having high-quality content and a strong data foundation. For Moderna, one example for innovation readiness is building a mature claims library now, in preparation of the upcoming Claims Agent in PromoMats.

6. Test and validate with your agency partner’s support

Moderna’s successful rollout of agentic AI within PromoMats involved close collaboration with Wildtype, a Veeva Global Content Partner. When agencies are selected by organizations to work on their content, they can play a key role by serving as a testing ground for the new agents, validating their benefits, and helping overcome change management concerns. They ensure AI agents fit into the company’s real-world content creation and submission workflows.

Wildtype, an Omnicom Health agency, is focusing on validating the efficiency of AI agents in Moderna’s workflows. They are seeing early signs that Quick Check Agent improves content quality and makes the process more efficient, helping build confidence that the approved content is compliant and up to standard. By working on multiple internal versions for pre-testing the AI agent, Wildtype hopes to reduce friction in an oftentimes cumbersome MLR cycle.

7. Implement without disruption

Agentic AI directly embedded in PromoMats means the technical implementation is fast and simple. In fact, Moderna’s digital team approved the project quickly because the implementation required no additional digital resources from the company. The focus was on deciding who should run the agents and when.

Once they established the plan, the AI button ‘appeared overnight’ for selected PromoMats users. The ability to configure a targeted rollout was critical to avoid widespread change management issues.

“From a project standpoint, implementation was very easy because Veeva AI Quick Check Agent runs alongside our regular workflow without causing any disruption.” – Jason Benagh, Global Marketing Operations Director, Moderna

Keep accelerating MLR in the future

Moderna’s journey proves that AI adoption does not require massive resources or complex, multi-year integrations. The implementation is simple: standard agents are purpose-built for the industry and available directly in users’ existing PromoMats workflows.

In the race to accelerate content delivery, a ‘wait-and-see’ strategy to harness AI equates to lost ground. Implementing the product now means realizing immediate benefits and mapping a vision of where the technology can go. Veeva’s roadmap includes more agents and innovation to further enhance MLR and content quality.

Get on the fastest path to approved content with Veeva AI for PromoMats.