Press release

22 Oct 2021 New York, US

EY Smart Reviewer helps accelerate and optimize approval of marketing materials in the life sciences industry

NEW YORK, 22 OCTOBER 2021. EY today announces the launch of EY Smart Reviewer, a new technology-driven solution for life sciences industry.

  • Solution leverages AI and natural language processing
  • Designed to remove risk and improve time, cost and compliance
  • More than 46,000 annotations within 4,700 documents have been processed to date

EY today announces the launch of EY Smart Reviewer, a new technology-driven solution for the life sciences industry. It leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing to help accelerate and improve the process to review materials used to market pharmaceutical and medical device products.

Life sciences is a highly regulated industry with strict controls guiding the marketing of products to doctors and patients. In order to capture a competitive advantage in the market, product marketing materials must be precisely targeted and rapidly developed. The industry’s current Medical, Legal, Regulatory Review (MLR) process, which helps to ensure marketing materials comply with regulatory guidelines, is often slow, inconsistent and requires significant manual review times for documents. There are also significant risks if off-label or other non-compliant messaging are hastily approved. Non-compliance with regulations can result in millions of dollars in regulatory fines, as well as delay actively promoting essential new therapies in the market.

The EY Smart Reviewer solution makes it possible for pharmaceutical and medical technology companies to automate the MLR process and significantly shorten review and approval timelines for modular content, thus driving faster speed to market for essential medicines. The solution makes the process more efficient. It increases speed by eliminating key manual tasks and automating the remaining tasks and it reduces costs by freeing up high-value people to focus on higher value-adding omnichannel activities, while lowering risk of regulatory fines. It also makes the MLR process more reliable by leveraging AI and machine learning to improve compliance by increasing objectivity and consistency of reviews. Finally, it increases the use of intelligence because the AI engine is consistently learning and improving, prioritizing actions and applying the leading practices.

Twelve machine learning modules make up the solution, with new modules being developed and added over time. Currently available in English, EY Smart Reviewer will also be available in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Chinese by early 2022.

Nick Cernese, EY Global Solution Sponsor for EY Smart Reviewer, says:

“There is an exponential need for approved online medical content, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This surge will create a need for rapid content creation and approval in the next several years. With EY Smart Reviewer, teams are making sure the Medical, Legal, Regulatory Review process is more efficient, with materials moving through the review lifecycle faster, freeing up time for those involved in the process to focus on more strategic tasks. It’s also more reliable and more intelligent for our clients. Our teams envision EY Smart Reviewer being tailored for adoption by other, highly-regulated industries.”

Arda Ural, EY Americas Health Sciences and Wellness Leader, says:

“EY Smart Reviewer is a proven application of AI and machine learning to help automate one of the most onerous processes of the life sciences industry: the review of promotional materials. The solution helps shorten review time without compromising high quality standards. At a leading pharma company, EY Smart Reviewer reduced cycle times across the end-to-end process by 51%. The solution’s capabilities can help enable biopharma and medtech companies to accelerate the approval of their products’ promotional materials so that patients can see and feel the therapeutic benefits sooner.”

Find out more about EY Smart Reviewer at ey.com/SmartReviewer.

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Notes to editors

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