Before You Invest in a Pharma Content Localization Platform 

Global teams may produce 70-slide decks, but local teams rarely need every slide. Without an easy way to select and adapt what is relevant, they often build brand new content locally. Based on 17 years of working with life sciences teams, we have observed that around 80% of content is still created from scratch.

Local teams have their own deadlines to meet, and modularization can feel like an additional step when global content must first be broken into reusable components.

According to Veeva’s survey of pharma and biotech professionals, 86% of teams report creating higher volumes of content than just six months prior. This growth puts additional pressure on Medical, Legal, and Regulatory (MLR) teams, as more original content requires full review and delays content delivery to local markets.

When subscribing to a pharma-specific AI translation engine, you solve only a narrow problem — converting existing content from one language to another. To reuse your global content while maintaining a certain degree of flexibility for localization, you need to look for a platform that connects your entire content supply chain — one that makes it easy to reuse approved modular content, enforce global brand and compliance guidelines automatically, and give local teams a faster path to compliant, on-brand content without reinventing it every time.

This piece focuses on what you need to pay attention to when choosing such a platform for content localization purposes. But before we begin, let’s see what our proprietary data shows about the current workflows global and local teams have.

What Our Data Says

Anecdotes have only gotten you so far. So, we looked at the numbers.

The State of the Pharma Content Supply Chain: Benchmarks and Operational Trends Across Organizations — our annual pharma content operations report by Viseven — analyzes 6,856 anonymized workflow activity datapoints from more than 20 enterprise pharmaceutical and life sciences companies. It maps where content work actually concentrates across all six steps of the content supply chain, including authoring and reuse.

The data was logged on the eWizard content supply chain platform between January 2025 and March 2026 by commercial content teams.

Two findings stand out

Two formats carry most of the production load. Approved email accounts for 29% of documented workflow activity, and eDetailers for 24%. That’s over half of all activity sitting in just two formats.

Structured reuse is still small, but it’s not shrinking. Modules account for just 1.6% of production activity. Email fragments, 1.3%. On paper, that looks marginal. But look at the trend instead of the snapshot: among companies that adopted modular workflows, monthly modular output climbed from roughly 1,000 in April 2025 to a peak near 2,700 in August of the same year, and has held above 1,900 ever since. No account that started modular workflows in 2025 pulled back in the following year.

Once teams feel the efficiency gains, like less localization efforts and faster review cycles, they don’t go back to producing everything from scratch.

So, what do you look for before investing in the content localization platform?

It Is Pharma-Specific

Generic tools like ChatGPT or Claude are not built around the realities of pharma localization. You need technology that understands medical terminology, regulated content, and the steps involved in adapting global content strategy for local markets.

It should use the right terminology when translating content and allow further fine-tuning around your products, approved materials, and company requirements. It should also support reuse, modular content, and pre-MLR checks so that localization does not stop at translation.

It Brings Design into Modular Content Earlier

Many teams are taught to treat modules as channel-agnostic, design-free units: pure, structured content stored in the digital asset management system or DAM without any visual treatment. The result is often a library full of approved modules that teams struggle to turn into complete channel experiences. This is one of the main reasons modular content programs stall at the pilot stage.

As soon as a module is used in an email, presentation, or webpage, it enters a design context. In practice, content cannot be fully separated from the layout and channel in which it will appear.

That is the reason why we developed a new feature in eWizard’s eVa AI. We wanted to make sure brand managers don’t think about such things as what module fits what blocks. eVa AI reads the brief and available images, identifies a suitable eWizard-compatible layout and block structure, and generates the outline and interactive email within that framework.

With content already mapped to the layout, teams can move from brief to production with fewer handoffs and revisions.

It Integrates with the DAM

Successful localization means that every team works from a single source of truth. In other words, your content platform should speak to your DAM where an approved global master lives.

This prevents local teams and agencies from working with outdated files, unapproved drafts, or content copied from previous campaigns. Everyone starts with the same validated material, making the process easier to manage across markets.

As an alternative, you can also opt for a solution that already has a content library, so you don’t need to bother with integrations.

It Adapts Global Content with a Clear Reuse Plan

Local teams need a clear way to identify which parts of global materials can be reused as they are, which require local adaptation, and which must be created for the market.

Our latest release presents a new feature that helps turn global decks into a local story plan before editing begins. eVa AI helps teams find relevant global content and maps each slide as “reuse as is,” “reuse with adaptation,” or “new.”

This gives local teams a structured starting point and helps them get more value from content that has already been approved. All proposed reuse and adaptation decisions remain subject to human review and approval.

It Identifies Market-Specific Issues Before MLR

Can the platform spot regulatory issues during localization? It is one of the questions we hear most often from clients. A global campaign may need to meet different regulatory, linguistic, and cultural expectations in every market. Building those considerations into localization gives teams an opportunity to address potential issues before formal MLR review.

Look for technology that can be configured for specific market requirements. Once fine-tuned, for example, eVa AI can flag potential regulatory risks, recommend improvements based on approved content in your DAM, and provide an indicative approval-readiness score before formal MLR review.

AI can support early compliance checks and local adaptation, but human reviewers, guided with empathy, remain responsible for evaluating its recommendations and approving the final content. Marketers bring the context needed to understand how local HCPs and patients discuss a condition, how easily they can understand the content, and which tone and format are appropriate for the market. AI acts as a co-pilot, helping accelerate production when the brief clearly defines the audience, intent, and local requirements.

It Builds Traceability into the First Draft

Traceability should begin during content creation. Teams should be able to see where each localized element came from, which version was used, what changed, and who approved it. This gives reviewers a clearer comparison with the approved source and makes future updates easier to manage.

That’s why we designed the functionality that lets eVa AI create the email outline from approved claims and source materials, preserving the original wording and its connection to the source. Users can inspect the claim details or return to Veeva Vault without tracing each message manually. With eWizard, you can also control versions, which is especially valuable when working across multiple markets.

It Connects Your People

When choosing technology, we tend to focus on business benefits, compare features, and decide which plan fits best. What we often overlook is how technology will change the way teams work together.

The right platform should give global, local, medical, regulatory, and agency teams a shared way to plan, create, adapt, review, and track content. Everyone should be able to see what is available, what can be reused, what has changed, and what needs approval. This reduces unnecessary handoffs and helps teams work from the same information instead of managing the process across disconnected emails, files, and tools.

Achieve Velocity in Pharma Content Localization

Content localization in life sciences can be a long and bumpy road. Market-specific regulations, local deadlines, and the type of content being adapted all shape the process. Still, you can bring the order to complexity. The right content platform can connect fragmented operations, accelerate localization through reuse, reduce avoidable MLR review cycles, and give global and local teams a clearer way to work together.

For more than 17 years, we have worked exclusively with life sciences, so we understand the industry from the inside. We know which workflows make localization more efficient, and we have built eWizard, powered by eVa AI, around them. We help leading brands and growing companies connect their teams and processes, reduce wasted effort, improve consistency, and give local teams the creative freedom to adapt content within clear boundaries.

If any of these ideas resonated with you, let’s talk about how they could work for your organization. Drop us a line, and we’ll connect you with the right specialist.