How do pharmaceutical organizations manage variations of content for different drug dosages, packaging, and regulatory jurisdictions using DITA?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

Pharmaceutical organizations face the challenge of managing variations of content for different drug dosages, packaging, and regulatory jurisdictions. DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) provides a structured and efficient way to handle this complexity, ensuring that the right content is delivered to the right audience while maintaining consistency and compliance.

Conditional Processing

Conditional processing in DITA allows pharmaceutical companies to manage variations in content effectively. Content can be tagged with conditions, such as drug dosages, packaging types, or regulatory jurisdictions. When generating documentation, DITA-aware tools can apply these conditions to include or exclude specific content, ensuring that documents are tailored to the intended audience. For instance, content relevant to a specific drug dosage or packaging configuration can be included while irrelevant information is omitted.

Content Reuse

Content reuse is another key feature of DITA that helps manage variations efficiently. Instead of duplicating content for similar drug formulations or packaging variations, DITA enables the creation of reusable content modules. These modules can be referenced and reused across different documents. When updates are required, changes can be made in a single location, ensuring consistency across all documents that use the same module. This reduces the risk of errors and streamlines content maintenance.

Example:

Here’s an example of how DITA can manage content variations for different drug dosages:


<topic id="drug_description">
  <title>Drug Description</title>
  <body>
    <p>This is a description of our drug product.</p>
    <ph conkeyref="dosage_10mg">Content for 10mg dosage.</ph>
    <ph conkeyref="dosage_20mg">Content for 20mg dosage.</ph>
  </body>
</topic>

In this example, the DITA topic “Drug Description” includes conditional content using “conkeyref” attributes for 10mg and 20mg dosages. When generating a document, the appropriate content will be included based on the specified dosage condition.