Your company may have a different name for it, like MMLR review, MRC review, PRC review, regulated content review, material review, or promotional review. Regardless of what you call it, you know that it is a non-negotiable step in getting your marketing materials into the hands of sales reps, medical science liaisons, healthcare providers, and other key audiences.
Good brands in any area stick to their brand guidelines and avoid making non-truthful or misleading claims about their products. In life sciences, doing so is even more important. Inaccurate claims about drugs or medical devices can lead to costly, brand-damaging violations and fines from regulatory bodies. Getting MLR review right is necessary for life science companies to thrive.
As you reflect and improve upon your own process, consider these four cornerstones of the MLR review that will set you and your organization up for success.
How do you set clear MLR goals and expectations?
When you get into a rhythm with an MLR review process, sometimes inefficiencies go unidentified and unaddressed. For example, maybe every time you get copy from a particular agency, the same errors appear, an outdated logo, a style guide gaffe, or a misused claim. To keep things moving, you correct the errors ad hoc.
Reactive, rather than proactive, processes like this can cause big problems down the road, frustrate the team, and create longer review and cycle times. Therefore, the first cornerstone of MLR success is setting clear goals.
There are tools available that create visibility into your MLR review process and can help identify pain points. For instance, if your process data reveals that your content goes through multiple review cycles before getting approved, you can establish a goal around cycle time (learn more about industry benchmarks here). Clear, documented goals align your team, create opportunities for learning, and establish a culture of continuous improvement.
Along with clear goals, a successful MLR review process needs clear expectations.
With internal staff and external partners all working on a single piece of content, confusion can grow over who is accountable for what. It's not hard to imagine having content ready for print, or even going live, only to realize that an error was missed simply because of unclear review roles.
This is why clearly documented roles and responsibilities within your standard operating procedures (SOPs) are so important to MLR success. SOPs ensure that everyone knows what is expected of them each time they review content, even if there is turnover or new partners on board.
How do you improve collaboration during MLR review?
During MLR review, having people working as a true team rather than in competing silos leads to success. You can foster healthy collaboration through:
- Clear onboarding and training when people join a company or are brought onto a project;
- Clear project planning with set deliverables;
- Playing to team members' strengths;
- Accounting for employees' different personalities, different capabilities, and different areas and levels of expertise.
When there is the sense that everyone is working toward the same goal, rather than duplicating work or being pushed to work outside of their wheelhouse, everyone is happier and fewer mistakes are made.
A smooth process makes for a happy team, and a happy team makes for a smooth process. In addition, our data shows that the happier teams are with their review process, the faster they are able to get content to market.
How do you build a culture of compliance?
We already mentioned that compliance violations can be costly and sacrifice a brand's reputation. With such high stakes, compliance-mindedness should be built in and reinforced as part of the review process.
Today, compliance-mindedness is synonymous with using the right tech tools. Take for example claims management, a potential compliance minefield.
If claims language is stored only on individual hard drives, or in the individual heads of employees, just one employee absence can derail an entire review process. In a best case scenario, you lose a day. In the worst, someone pushes a document containing incorrect language ahead, leading to a violation. Claims language should be kept in a central location that can be easily accessed by all.
Compliance becomes an issue with MLR reviews facilitated by run-of-the-mill office tools. You receive an email with an attachment, take a look at the document, make your changes and send it along. The process seems to work.
But the errors it sets you up for soon become obvious. Multiple versions of files flying back and forth. Incorrect documents being pushed forward in the process. Bottlenecks that take up valuable time.
That is why MLR review-specific tools are ideal; tools that support speed, compliance, and collaboration.
How can software improve MLR review?
MLR review is a complex process. It demands that many people review, provide feedback on, and sign off on a document. It often occurs on a high-pressure deadline. At each step in the process there is the possibility for error, even when you're all on the same page and adhering to best practices.
But such errors can be reduced to zero with the right tech tools; they are the cornerstone of all MLR cornerstones.
Vodori automates and streamlines the entire MLR review process. The software lets you manage meticulous, MLR-specific tasks like linking references and claims as easily as today's word processors catch and correct spelling errors. It lets you review, annotate, and collaborate on documents in real time. And it ensures your organization stays compliant with an audit trail, version history, electronic signature, and document expirations.
To estimate what a faster, more efficient review process could be worth to your team, try our ROI calculator.
The more efficient you are during MLR review, the faster you're able to get your content to market and key stakeholders. Rather than backtracking, cleaning up mistakes, or bracing for a warning from regulators, you're focusing on your organization's mission and developing quality content. And when that content includes digital assets, our web content review checklist helps your team catch issues before MLR. With these cornerstones in place, your organization will be set up for MLR success.
Frequently asked questions about MLR review
What is MLR review?
MLR review stands for medical, legal, and regulatory review, the process life sciences companies use to ensure promotional materials comply with internal and external regulations before going to market. For definitions of MLR and related terms like PRC and ad/promo, see our MLR terminology guide.
What makes an MLR review process effective?
An effective MLR review process rests on four cornerstones: clear goals and expectations, strong collaboration across functions, a built-in culture of compliance, and purpose-built review software. Together they reduce errors and rework, keep teams aligned, and shorten review cycles. For more on maintaining compliance throughout the process, see how top pharmaceutical teams ensure regulatory compliance throughout promotional review.
How can you reduce MLR review cycle times?
Start by making your process visible: track how many cycles content goes through and where it stalls, set goals against that data, and remove the manual steps that cause rework. Purpose-built software helps by centralizing claims and references, enabling real-time collaboration, and automating compliance checks. For a deeper checklist, see 18 questions to consider for improving MLR approval time with software.
How long should an MLR review cycle take?
Review cycle times vary widely by organization, content type, and number of review rounds, so the goal is less about hitting a universal number and more about benchmarking your own cycles and improving them over time.
Ready to strengthen your MLR process?
See how the right software supports every cornerstone of MLR review. Get a demo of Vodori.