Modular content in pharma means building promotional content from pre-approved pieces, mostly claims with their references and required context, instead of writing and reviewing every asset from scratch. Once a claim has been approved, reusing it in a new email, banner or detail aid should not require the same depth of review again. The claims library is the system of record that makes this possible.
The idea is more than a decade old, and most large pharma companies have tried it. The results are uneven. Programs stall when the library holds claims without the rules for using them, when modules approved in one channel quietly break in another, and when reviewers cannot trust that a reused module is still what they approved. This guide covers what modular content really requires, what a claim record needs to contain, and how to run it so it saves review time instead of adding a new kind of overhead.
What is modular content, and what is it not?
Modular content works in three layers. Claims are single approved statements, each tied to its reference. Modules combine a claim with what has to travel with it: a qualifier, a footnote, a visual, a required safety statement. Templates are channel layouts with fixed places for modules and for non-negotiable elements such as the ISI. An asset is an assembly of approved modules in an approved template.
It is not a shared drive of approved PDFs, and it is not copying sentences out of last year’s detail aid. Those approaches reuse words without the context that made them approvable, which is exactly what reviewers worry about. And it does not remove MLR review. It changes what review has to look at: how known pieces are put together, rather than every word from first principles.
The payoff is consistency and speed. The same claim reads the same way in every channel and market. Reuse can be reviewed faster under rules your MLR team has agreed. Localization starts from approved source text. And when the label changes, you can find every asset that uses an affected claim, instead of searching for it.
What should a claim record in a claims library contain?
Start with the claim itself, verbatim, exactly as approved. Small wording changes change meaning, so the library holds one approved wording, plus any approved variants, rather than a paraphrase. Then the support: each reference, with the precise location of the supporting data, the page, table or figure, and ideally the highlighted passage, so a reviewer can verify it in seconds.
Next, the rules for use. Which audiences is the claim approved for: HCPs, patients, payers? Which channels and markets? Which other content must appear with it, such as the indication statement, a description of the study population, or specific safety information? Which combinations are not allowed? These rules are what turn a list of sentences into something reviewers can trust in reuse.
Then the lifecycle fields: the claim type (efficacy, safety, dosing, mechanism, economic), its status, approval date and next review date, the version of the label it was approved against, and an owner. The label version matters most. When the prescribing information changes, it is the field that tells you which claims, and therefore which assets, need to be looked at again.
How do you build a claims library without boiling the ocean?
Start with one brand and one market. Pull every approved asset from the last year or two and extract the claims they make. You will find that a relatively small set of core claims, often a few dozen, appears in most of the content, with many slightly different wordings. Those core claims are the place to start.
Normalize the wording. For each core claim, agree a single approved wording, or a short list of approved variants for different audiences and lengths, and retire the rest. This is usually the most valuable conversation in the whole program, because it surfaces the differences in how teams and agencies have been stating the same evidence.
Have Medical confirm the support for each claim against its reference, and have Regulatory set the rules for use. Then load the claims into the system your team will actually use, whether that is your review platform or a dedicated library, with versioning switched on. Expand to more claims, brands and markets only once the first library is being used in briefs.
How does modular content work day to day?
Briefs reference claims by their library ID instead of describing what the asset should say. Writers and designers work within templates and approved modules, and everything new is clearly marked as new: a new headline, a new visual, a new combination of claims.
Agree review tiers with your MLR team and write them into your standard operating procedure. A reused module in an approved template and context can follow a lighter review path. A new claim, a new combination or a new channel goes through full review. Without that written agreement, reviewers will reasonably treat every asset as new, and the program will save nothing.
Watch for the three ways reuse goes wrong. Context changes meaning, so a claim beside a new image can imply something it did not before. Localization changes meaning, so a translated claim needs its own check. And balance is cumulative, so an asset assembled entirely from approved modules can still overweight benefit against risk. Good review rules address all three explicitly.
What happens to modular content when the label changes?
This is where a claims library repays its cost. When the prescribing information is updated, with a new safety warning, a changed indication or new data, the library tells you exactly which claims were approved against the old label. From those claims you can find every module and every live asset that uses them.
Without a library, a label change becomes a manual hunt through shared drives, agency folders and channel platforms, and assets that were missed stay in market with outdated information. With one, it is a list: update or retire these claims, rebuild these modules, re-review and redistribute these assets, and withdraw what can no longer be used.
Where AI changes modular content
For most companies, the bottleneck in modular content was never the library. It was turning approved modules into finished assets across formats and channels quickly enough to matter. Assembly, adaptation and design still took weeks of agency time, so reuse saved review time but not production time.
AI can close that gap, on one condition: it has to be restricted to the library. A model that writes freely and then has its output checked against approved claims creates new review work. A system that writes only from approved claims, cites each one, and records where every line came from produces assets that are modular by construction.
That is how Magic Studio works. Each brand keeps its dossiers and every approved claim, with its source, in the Claims Library, and the studios write from them, never around them. Every claim in a finished asset is cited, checked against the label for its market and traceable on request, across Video, Docs, Ads, Approved Email and Web. Finished work flows into review and into Veeva PromoMats, the system your MLR team already runs.
Frequently asked questions
What is a claims library in pharma?
A claims library is the system of record for approved promotional claims. Each record holds the approved wording, its references with the exact supporting data, the audiences, channels and markets it is approved for, the content that must appear with it, its approval and review dates, and the label version it was approved against.
Does modular content remove the need for MLR review?
No. It changes what review focuses on. Reused modules in an approved context can follow a lighter review path agreed with the MLR team, while new claims, new combinations and new channels still go through full review.
How many claims should a claims library start with?
Start with the core claims that appear in most of a brand’s content, which is often a few dozen. Normalize their wording, confirm their support and set their rules for use before expanding to more claims, brands and markets.
What is the difference between a claim and a module?
A claim is a single approved statement with its reference. A module is a claim combined with everything that must travel with it, such as qualifiers, footnotes, a visual or required safety information, ready to be placed into a template.
How does modular content support omnichannel marketing?
Because every channel draws on the same approved claims and modules, messages stay consistent across email, web, social, field and events, and new channel versions can be assembled and reviewed faster than writing each one from scratch.