What is the role of conditional processing in delivering content tailored to different drug formulations, clinical trials, and regulatory submissions?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

Conditional processing in DITA plays a crucial role in delivering tailored content for different drug formulations, clinical trials, and regulatory submissions. It allows pharmaceutical companies and regulatory bodies to efficiently manage vast amounts of information while ensuring that the right content is delivered to the right audience.

Conditional Text

One of the primary mechanisms for conditional processing in DITA is the use of conditional text. Pharmaceutical documentation often needs to address specific drug formulations or clinical trial phases. By tagging content with conditions, you can control when and where content appears. For example, you can create conditions for different drug strengths, dosage forms, or patient populations. This ensures that only relevant information is included in documents, minimizing the risk of errors due to outdated or irrelevant content.

Content Filtering

Conditional processing also enables content filtering based on specific criteria. For regulatory submissions, different regions or authorities may require variations of the same documentation. With DITA, you can filter content to meet specific regulatory requirements. For example, you can create conditional filters for FDA submissions, EMA submissions, or other regulatory bodies. This ensures that the content is compliant with regional regulations, streamlining the submission process.

Example:

Here’s an example of how conditional processing is used in DITA to deliver tailored content:


<topic id="drug_formulation">
  <title>Drug Formulation</title>
  <body>
    <p>This document provides information about our drug formulation.</p>
    <ph conkeyref="strength">Strength-specific content.</ph>
    <ph conkeyref="dosage_form">Dosage form-specific content.</ph>
    <ph conkeyref="population">Population-specific content.</ph>
  </body>
</topic>

In this example, the DITA topic “Drug Formulation” includes conditional content using “conkeyref” attributes. Depending on the conditions set for “strength,” “dosage_form,” and “population,” the appropriate content will be included when generating the document.