Four Ways Life Sciences Companies Address the Digital Content Imperative

Apr 07, 2021 | Pooja Lal

Digital content use in face-to-face calls increased to 80% in 2020, compared to 20% in the past year. This change challenged traditional processes and compelled life sciences companies to rethink their content strategies.

While each company has its unique operating models and business objectives, it’s clear that supporting digital engagement and meeting HCP needs remain priorities for the industry. Content experts share stories of speed and scalability to address the digital content imperative.

Shift to digital

As digital becomes the norm and the amount of medical and scientific information doubles drastically, life sciences companies should focus on delivering quality over quantity when it comes to content. MSD addressed this by automating a previously manual content process that enables speed in their content delivery. Tom Wolf, director of digital operations and analytics, shared how they leverage templates to standardize content creation while still having the ability to customize content. Having a single digital asset database helps them increase reuse and create a tagging framework to help them find content faster.

Modular content on the rise

Modular content is also gaining traction as HCP preferences shift towards shorter and more dynamic content. The need to better adapt to these changing preferences and their frustration in lengthy review cycles drove a top 10 pharmaceutical company to re-evaluate their strategy and switch to a modular content approach. Their content team set up foundational elements critical to the project’s success, including a defined structure, level of modularity, taxonomy, and tagging frameworks. This approach enables this life sciences company to pivot when needed, standardize processes, and gather insights to optimize the content journey.

Content production at speed

Enabling speed requires a robust content landscape with as few customized integrations as possible, and a strong collaboration with stakeholders involved in the content creation process. Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, focuses on leveraging native integrations and building partnerships between commercial and regulatory teams when streamlining their content processes. Jason Yau, global channel evolution senior manager, shared how they redefined the medical, legal, and regulatory reviews (MLR) process, previously owned by regulatory teams, and integrated it within the end-to-end content journey. They now benefit from a more unified content process from creation to distribution with digital asset management (DAM) capabilities, higher content reuse rates, and faster content time-to-market.

Scaling to a fully-digital content ecosystem

The shift to digital and remote work also urged life sciences companies to eliminate manual forms and hard copies in their content processes. Anna Solé Suriol, promotional review specialist, and Juan Antonio García Oliver, functional manager, led Grifols‘ global content teams to move from a manual, paper-based MLR review to a fully digital end-to-end content management solution. The move made it easier for Grifols’ teams to create and collaborate on content compliantly, adapt existing global content for local markets, and enable multichannel engagement at scale.

2021 remains uncertain, but digital engagement will remain at the forefront of life sciences companies’ commercial strategy. An integrated and streamlined content ecosystem helps your teams deliver compliant content faster and improve the overall customer experience.

Power your omnichannel strategy with modular content. Read this guide to learn how.