How is DITA used in documenting drug descriptions, indications, contraindications, and dosage instructions?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

DITA plays a crucial role in documenting drug descriptions, indications, contraindications, and dosage instructions in the pharmaceutical industry. This structured authoring approach allows pharmaceutical companies to create consistent, compliant, and easily maintainable content for drug documentation.

Topic-Based Authoring

One of the key strategies in using DITA for drug documentation is topic-based authoring. Each piece of information, such as drug descriptions, indications, contraindications, and dosage instructions, is treated as a separate topic. These topics can be reused across various documents, ensuring consistency. For instance:


<topic id="drug_description">
  <title>Drug Description</title>
  <body>...
</topic>
<topic id="indications">
<title>Indications</title>
<body>...
</topic>
<topic id="contraindications">
<title>Contraindications</title>
<body>...
</topic>
<topic id="dosage_instructions">
<title>Dosage Instructions</title>
<body>...
</topic>

Content Reuse

DITA allows for easy content reuse. If a piece of information, such as dosage instructions, is relevant to multiple drugs, you can reuse the same topic in different drug documents. Any updates or changes made to the original topic will automatically reflect in all instances where it is reused.

Conditional Text

Pharmaceutical documentation often requires the inclusion of conditional text based on factors like patient age, weight, or medical history. DITA supports conditional text tagging, enabling the generation of personalized drug information based on specific patient criteria. This ensures that healthcare professionals receive accurate and tailored information.

By employing these DITA strategies, pharmaceutical companies can efficiently create, manage, and update drug descriptions, indications, contraindications, and dosage instructions, meeting regulatory requirements and improving patient safety.