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Life science content reviews got you down? See if you’ve outgrown your process…

Written by: Annalise Ludtke
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The demand for accurate, compelling healthcare information is enormous, especially with the speed of scientific innovation happening today. But many life science teams struggle to review content fast enough to meet this speed of innovation, making it difficult to stay competitive in an ever-changing marketplace. 

 

Often, frustrations with content reviews stem from the process itself and can indicate that your team has simply outgrown your process. Read on to learn four common reasons why you may have outgrown your content review process, and advice for what to do about it:

  1. You’re developing more digital content
  2. You have audit remediations
  3. Your product portfolio is growing
  4. Your team struggles to get content to market
 

1. You’re developing more digital and social content

In the current climate, life science organizations are developing more digital communications and social content to communicate medical information, market products, launch campaigns, and engage key stakeholders. The sheer number of materials your teams are creating can cause slowdowns, making it difficult to meet deadlines.

During times of increased digital content creation, any process based on paper, email or spreadsheets quickly becomes unwieldy and time-consuming. If this sounds familiar, it may be time to change your process. 

What to do about it

Take inspiration from Owlet Baby Care, who found itself outgrowing the homegrown content review process done via Google Docs, spreadsheets, and slack. With the right software solution, they not only established one source of truth for their content, but got their average job duration down to 11.1 days with an average of 1.3 circulations.

 

2. You have audit remediations

If you’re caught out of compliance, there can be some serious sanctions by governing bodies like the FDA and FTC such as:

  • FDA untitled and warning letters, which can tarnish a brand’s reputation
  • Sanctions that include a Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA), which requires significant time and effort from your team to complete, and puts other work on hold
  • Financial penalties

An audit leads to remediation, which can be incredibly difficult and frustrating if you’re using a manual or paper-based process. If you’re subjected to an audit and aren’t confident in preparing a response, you’ve likely outgrown your process.

What to do about it

Read about strategies you can employ to better enforce your promotional review process compliance. Or read a story about Xellia Pharmaceuticals, who subjected themselves to an internal mock audit on their promotional materials to ensure industry compliance.

 

3. Your product portfolio is growing

Congratulations, you’re launching more products! It’s also an indicator that your team may run into problems with your current content review processes as you prepare for an influx of material. 

What to do about it if you’re using a paper-based process:

When using a paper-based process during a time of growth, oftentimes companies struggle to adapt when faced with the growing number of materials routed for review, resulting in bottlenecks or missed timelines. 

Rest assured, times of frustration can lead to better outcomes when you accept that change can be good. Case in point: One growing diagnostics company was able to move off of emails and disparate storage tools and ultimately reduce their promotional review process steps by a whopping 80%, resulting in a 24% increase in throughput over 4 months.

 
What to do about it if you’re using software:

If you’re using software for content reviews during a time of growth, oftentimes you want to adjust your workflows for efficiency or because your business has changed. But, some systems only support a limited number of workflows or workflow changes, meaning you may need to enlist a third-party vendor to reconfigure, often at added cost.

Luckily, not all software companies are created equal. We put together this handy table to help you compare solutions (and discover who offers unlimited configuration changes at no additional cost).

 
4. Your team struggles to get content to market

In order to keep up with your competitors, you need to get content out, quickly. If it’s taking your content review teams more than 5-7 days to review a piece of advertising, promotional, or medical content, you likely need to revisit your process and determine where bottlenecks or inefficiencies are occurring.

This can be especially difficult if you’re using paper, email, or generic workflow software to support content reviews.

What to do about it

A solution doesn’t always require a huge time commitment from you and your team, or even a lengthy plan in terms of timeline. One example is Biocartis, a global molecular diagnostics company, who moved off their manual email-based process and completed implementation and training for their new software in just one 1 week.

Next steps

If you think you may be outgrowing your current process for content reviews, we have more resources available as you assess your situation. 

Additional reading

Are you just getting started with evaluation of your process? If so, check out these resources:

Tag(s): Process Optimization , Business Solutions , Promotional Review

Annalise Ludtke

Senior Manager, Marketing Communications at Vodori

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