DIA Europe Takeaways: AI, Componentization, and Standards

Recently, Docuvera attended DIA Europe 2023, a conference organized by the Drug Information Association (DIA), a global nonprofit. The event aims to bring together Life Sciences professionals to exchange knowledge and collaborate to improve healthcare worldwide and provides a platform to discuss the latest developments in healthcare and regulatory science.

This year, under the theme of “Advancing Health Priorities,” the top trends for Life Sciences organizations were:

• Artificial intelligence
• Digital transformation
• Content and interoperability standards

Below, we’ll break out the themes and share our leading takeaways in each category.

AI and Life Sciences: Double the fun

These days, everywhere you look, artificial intelligence (AI) is all the buzz—including at DIA Europe. The conference featured multiple sessions exploring the topic, including one demo by Yseop, where the attendance for the AI-focused presentation more than doubled the available space.

Within Life Sciences, AI is a technology looking for its ideal application. Much like most new technology going through a hype cycle, the optimism of its transformative capabilities is extremely high. For solutions, such as structured component authoring (SCA), AI will likely provide significant benefits in the authoring and digitization of content through:

• Natural Language Generation (NLG): NLG engines that can generate content based on data sets (e.g., create 100 pages of patient narratives that describe people in a clinical study) could be used to create the first draft of content into an SCA platform. Medical authors would then review and edit the content to ensure it was fit for purpose but would be freed from the mundane task of writing draft content.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP engines analyze text content and perform actions based on that analysis. With SCA, an NLP engine could suggest metadata (e.g., the vertigo code) to associate with a text component, thereby simplifying the component tagging process and overall digital transformation of Life Science content.
• Machine Translation (MT): Using MT, SCA solutions like Docuvera can generate content in different languages and lay versions of scientific documents. Though users will still need to review the machine translation to ensure it is fit for purpose, MT can greatly reduce the effort in manually translating content.

Digitization and componentization of content

Digital transformation was another hot-button topic at DIA Europe, with many conversations centered on how to get content out of documents and into components or usable data. For many organizations, the digitalization and componentization of content promises to make content more available across an organization, systems and the industry as a whole.

One of the driving factors toward digital transformation in Life Sciences lies in various health authorities setting new mandates. For example, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will soon require data submission for labels where key elements of the label (indications, adverse reactions, etc.) are represented as codes (e.g., “vertigo”  is identified as “10047341”). The EMA is expected to require this data submission for all pharmaceutical companies in the EU starting in 2024.

Docuvera’s SCA solution is well-positioned to be the gateway from document-centric Life Science content to a data-centric approach where componentized content can be codified with universal metadata. By design, Docuvera allows content to be represented in both documents and data, which will help organizations that leverage the platform as the industry transitions into structured digital content.

Setting the content and interoperability standards

Another key theme at the conference was the emergence of standards allowing for information to be universally identified by content standards (e.g., ISO IDMP). As noted above, tagging content with codes allows for that information to be understood by any system with access to the content standard.

In addition to the content standards, interoperability standards (e.g., HL7 FHIR) enables content to be easily exchanged between systems. The impact of these emerging standards allows for the portability of content across organizations, systems, and platforms.

Like the transition from document-centric to data-centric, Docuvera is primed to provide content componentization and association of that content with metadata. Because the content in our SCA platform is already structured and codified, mapping an export to an FHIR output is straightforward.

Docuvera: SCA that’s future-focused

With Life Sciences leaders buzzing about trends including AI, digital transformation, and standards, it’s an exciting time for the industry. For organizations ready to start down their own path to a more optimized future, an innovative SCA solution like Docuvera can help jumpstart that journey.

The team at Docuvera has taken the concept of component content authoring and designed a platform specifically for Life Sciences organizations. With an intuitive interface combined with advanced capabilities, such as embedded metadata, translation, or component reuse, we’re reimagining the drug development and documentation lifecycle.

Reach out today to learn how Docuvera can help your organization take the first step toward a more connected and efficient future.