Does Content Supply Chain Really Matter? 

Content creation in the pharmaceutical industry is complex and demanding. Growing regulatory requirements, the expansion of digital channels, and the need for personalized communication have significantly increased the volume of content that teams must produce and manage. As a result, many organizations are turning to the content supply chain approach to bring more structure, visibility, and efficiency to the entire content lifecycle.

In the recent episode of Pharma Talks, Nataliya Andreychuk discussed the importance of the content supply chain. Joining her was Prasant Vijaykumar, Head of Strategy at Viseven. Prasant is an expert in content strategy with years of experience working in pharma, with pharma, and for agencies serving pharma.

Strategy Hasn’t Changed — Even in 15–20 Years

Reflecting on his career, Prasant said that when Nataliya mentioned his experience in life sciences marketing strategy, he found himself looking back. The number of therapeutic areas and products he has worked on over the past 15–20 years is mind-boggling.

Despite that breadth of experience, one thing has remained consistent. Across every product, the way content is developed has followed the same core approach.

A pharmaceutical marketing strategy is still built around the product and its content. It begins with understanding patient needs and unmet needs, as well as the unmet needs of healthcare professionals. From there, the focus shifts to communicating the product’s key properties in a way that addresses those needs for both patients and prescribing healthcare professionals.

This fundamental approach has not changed. The structure of pharma digital strategy and the way value propositions are built through content continue to follow the same principles.

The Core Challenge in the Age of AI

As the conversation moved to the content development process, Prasant addressed the growing discussion around AI. Although AI is used to build content and, indeed, saves us time, the most serious blockers have remained the same.

MLR review is still widely considered a major bottleneck in the pharma content supply chain, and the one that slows things down the most. Prasant says that when you bring up the issue of speed to the MLR teams, they respond that, for one, the verification process takes time, because you have to ensure that all claims are substantiated. Also, the review takes longer because there are issues with either quality, spelling, or claims not being referenced properly.

And while AI can support detection and learning from previously approved content, it is not a complete solution. Technology can assist, but contextual judgment — especially in regulated environments like pharma — remains essential.

Expectations Placed on AI Technology

Nataliya pointed out that the industry is currently filled with sometimes unrealistic expectations that AI will fix many or all long-standing issues in pharma content creation.

She acknowledged that the technology will continue to evolve. Over time, the industry will likely see more advances in this area. However, today’s reality still requires a closer look at the entire content supply chain — especially the stages in between, where delays and inefficiencies often appear.

This raises an important question: where exactly can organizations optimize the process, and what does the smarter content supply chain look like today in the AI era?

Prasant believes the change is already underway, noting that companies across the supply chain are experimenting with different AI solutions.

AI Across the Content Supply Chain

One of the earliest points where AI can assist is in the content briefing stage.

When a brand manager needs new content, they first need to communicate their strategy to the agency. That usually requires writing a detailed brief — something many managers simply do not have time for. AI is there to enable some of those processes, which will help the brand manager to write the brief. In this scenario, AI can generate the initial draft of the document, leaving the brand manager with the simpler task of reviewing it and ensuring accuracy.

AI can also support the next stage of the process — content creation itself.

The core messages around a pharmaceutical product rarely change. Whether communicating efficacy, safety, or ease of use, these key messages remain consistent. By modularizing those components and storing them in a structured library, teams can reuse and repurpose them more efficiently.

Why Modular Content Is Still Critical

Nataliya noted that modular content is widely discussed in the industry, yet its benefits are often not fully understood. While many organizations recognize the struggle of managing content efficiently, they may not be fully educated on the advantages that modular content can bring, even in the AI era.

At the same time, many technology providers are racing to incorporate AI into their solutions. According to Nataliya, every content platform today wants to position itself as AI-powered, whether it is generating content, managing databases, or processing information.

However, the real difference often appears in the underlying data. At Viseven, customers may use similar large language models and similar architectures. Yet the results vary significantly depending on how the organization has prepared its knowledge base.

Structured Content Makes AI More Effective

Nataliya emphasized this point directly:

Modular content is your structured data.

Prasant agreed. While AI can generate new content, that approach introduces more risk in regulated industries like pharma.

It’s not going to solve the MLR issue.

Even if AI increases the speed of content generation, every new piece of content still needs to be reviewed. In fact, brand-new content can often be riskier than reusing previously approved materials.

Structured modular content, on the other hand, has already passed review and approval. This makes it significantly more reliable and easier to reuse.

It also provides an additional advantage: traceability. When modular content is stored in a properly managed digital asset system and tagged correctly, teams can easily identify where each piece of content originated. When an AI tool assembles new materials from those approved modules, it can also reference the source of each component.

Content Velocity and the Engagement Challenge

Nataliya stressed that the conversation about modular content is not just about technology. Ultimately, it is about engagement. As companies pursue stronger engagement with healthcare professionals and patients, the demand for content continues to grow. There are more channels, more personalization requirements, and more digital conversations happening online — including those driven by digital opinion leaders.

All of this dramatically increases the volume of content that needs to be produced and distributed. This raises a fundamental question: do organizations actually have the right infrastructure to support this level of compliant content production?

Nataliya noted that many systems remain rigid or monolithic. When companies change suppliers or adopt new tools, they often have to redesign templates and rebuild workflows from scratch. Prasant confirmed the point:

We talk about AI being able to create the content, but in the end, those pieces of content need to be in a certain format.

With an ever-expanding number of integration options and publishing channels, organizations need systems capable of supporting seamless distribution. The goal is to build an engine that allows companies to create content once and publish it anywhere.

Designing the Content Supply Chain for the Future

For Nataliya, this means that organizations must approach the content supply chain management with a more logistical mindset. Companies need to clearly define every step in the process, understand where meaningful content components are stored, and map how those components connect to each other. Because even AI requires this level of structure.

We need this structured thinking. Without it, companies risk losing relevance in an increasingly crowded information environment, especially as misinformation online continues to grow.

At the same time, the role of human review will not disappear. MLR processes will still require a human in the loop, and as content volumes grow, those teams could quickly become overwhelmed without the right structure in place.

Prasant agreed that organizations must view the entire process from end to end. Content demand now extends beyond digital channels alone. Print content still exists, while digital environments continue to evolve. Headless CMS platforms support faster and more personalized content delivery, but new formats are also emerging.

Already, technology allows us to simulate the conversation between a doctor and a sales rep to ensure that the sales professional is fully prepared to answer all real-world questions.

The Missing Link: Integrating Web Content

Nataliya raised another gap that often appears in real-world content supply chains: web content. She observed that in many organizations, website content is managed separately from other content workflows, almost as if it exists in “a parallel universe.”

Yet web pages are among the most complex forms of content. They combine multiple formats, components, and information layers. So, should organizations reuse web content for other formats, or should they integrate web content into the supply chain from the very beginning?

Prasant noted that the role of websites in pharma has already started to change. Previously, many brands maintained separate product websites that attracted very little traffic. Today, however, the trend is shifting toward centralized HCP portals. These portals allow healthcare professionals to access information about multiple products in one place.

This is where headless CMS platforms and content authoring solutions come together. If a team creates a piece of content for an e-detailer, for example, the same modular components can also be used on the web portal.

By connecting content authoring systems with headless CMS platforms, organizations can publish the same information across multiple channels without recreating the content from scratch.

Content Velocity Is More Than Speed

Nataliya emphasized that the content supply chain must function as a true chain, without the visible gaps that many organizations experience today. These gaps become especially visible when complex content elements, such as web pages or e-detail aids, are not included in a modular structure.

When those elements sit outside the modular system, teams face a dilemma: how to break previously created content into meaningful pieces so that it can be reused elsewhere. While it is still possible to start decomposing content later, Nataliya noted that a more integrated approach works better when web content is included in the structure from the very beginning.

Prasant agreed and added that the conversation around content velocity is often misunderstood. Velocity is not just about the speed of creating more and more content.

Localization and Connectivity Across the Supply Chain

Nataliya pointed out that velocity also has another important dimension: localization.

Often, when teams think about velocity, they focus only on how quickly content can move to production. However, localization introduces another layer of complexity, especially for global pharmaceutical organizations.

This is the other angle of that. How fast can I localize?

Imagine a content ecosystem that includes emails, e-detailers, printed materials, and social media assets, but excludes web content from the content supply chain workflow. This fragmentation creates significant challenges for global teams that need to adapt content for different markets.

For Nataliya, the issue is not about choosing a single vendor or limiting the number of vendors involved. Instead, it is about how well the entire chain works together.

Prasant highlighted localization as one of the most critical issues in the AI era. If organizations cannot manage localization effectively, the adoption of AI-powered solutions becomes much more difficult. And despite the rapid technological change, many of the underlying challenges remain the same. Processes and people still play a central role in successful adoption — just as they did ten years ago.

Infrastructure Matters More Than Individual Tools

Nataliya reinforced this idea by emphasizing the importance of infrastructure. For her, the key message is clear: the content delivery supply chain is not defined by how many vendors or tools an organization uses. What matters is how those AI content creation tools connect and function together as part of a larger system.

Companies must think about how solutions work together to form a cohesive chain — one that supports easy localization, smooth collaboration across markets, and consistent content delivery.

When systems are poorly connected, conflicts emerge between formats, tools, and workflows. Those conflicts directly affect how quickly organizations can engage their audiences and how effective pharma brand communication becomes.

For vendors and service providers, this also means understanding where their expertise can bring the most value within that chain.

Improving the Supply Chain Step by Step

Building a more effective content supply chain does not happen overnight. Instead, organizations gradually unlock new capabilities as they improve their infrastructure.

Companies can introduce improvements step by step — modularization, templatization, localization, or changes in the medical-legal-regulatory review process. Even relatively small adjustments can significantly accelerate the pharma content workflow.

One example is shifting the MLR review earlier in the process, before the final asset is produced.

If we just remove the blockers down the road, we can be accelerated 50%.

The change itself may seem small, but the impact on marketing efficiency can be substantial.

For Nataliya, this is exactly how organizations should approach content supply chain challenges: by identifying key bottlenecks and addressing them systematically.

A Conversation That Will Continue

As the discussion came to a close, Nataliya emphasized that the topic of content supply chains will remain highly relevant for the industry.

The evolution of AI, modular content strategies, and digital engagement will continue to reshape how pharmaceutical companies create and distribute content. However, the success of these innovations will ultimately depend on how well organizations design and connect the entire content supply chain.

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