Ask any pharma marketer for their biggest headache, and you’ll hear a similar story: an endlessly slow medical, legal, and regulatory (MLR) process that bogs down the very campaigns designed to help and support healthcare professionals (HCPs) and patients alike.

In a world where good science goes unnoticed or never actually sees the light of day due to lengthy sign-off requirements, finding a way to navigate compliance without stalling creativity rapidly, and at volume in today's online world has become a top priority.

At nitro, we’ve spent 20 years working with brand and commercial teams that grapple with these roadblocks daily. We’ve witnessed how the painstaking revision process—sometimes taking many months for a single asset—can undermine even the most innovative ideas. And yet, we know that balanced, legally sound content isn’t negotiable. It can be a fine line between responsibly educating HCPs and inadvertently stepping outside the ABPI Code of Practice (in the UK), for instance.

The good news? Artificial intelligence may help tilt that balance in our favour. It’s an exciting and busy space for investigation, and thanks to the latest generation of large language models (LLMs), we’re seeing fresh opportunities to automate the most time-consuming aspects of compliance. Combining modular content, live feedback on claims, and near-instant checks against codes of practice could, in the near future, free teams to focus on strategy rather than duplicative grunt work which we are all too familiar with.

We’ve been experimenting with an early prototype—an AI-driven compliance checker that taps into RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) modeling, leveraging real ABPI rulings to help you gauge whether something you have in mind is likely to meet industry standards.

Right now, AvaRx (as we’re calling it) is more of a proof of concept -and, dare we say, a bit of fun- but you can think of it as your quick checker, or ABPI refresher. Whilst tailored to the ABPI and the PMCPA because of their online transparency, this could also easily be mapped across to the EFPIA, and later individual European bodies (that typically both provide and enforce the code). Similarly, we could develop an equivalent for MSLs, or for clinical trial designs.

The premise is simple: you type in your question, such as, “Can we mention a disease area and our company name without referencing a product?”, or “Is it acceptable to provide off-label data if an HCP requests it?” and then our virtual expert will check it against existing ABPI guidance and all the relevant cases, before delivering you the relevant content along with its own advice. You can then rate AvaRx’s response to help them improve. And yes, whilst it’s training there is still the possibility of some peculiar responses.

Once trained though its quick check feedback will remain ‘guidance’ rather than official sign-off, obviously. Think of it more of an extra set of digital “eyes” to highlight possible pitfalls early on, provide a discussion point, or hopefully help steer in the right direction.

Whether you’re brand new to AI or a seasoned digital manager looking for ideas (or a refresh on the ABPI), we hope you’ll find it a useful experiment in what might be possible next. Click the link to access AvaRx Compliance Checker here: https://nitro-labs-staging.github.io/compliance-tool-stand-alone/early-access/.

Of course, if it sparks any ideas or raises questions, we’re here to chat -just drop us a note. In our next post, we’ll dive deeper into the real-world potential of AI for content production, compliance checks, and marketing, and some hints and tips on how pharma teams can scale up these capabilities responsibly.

For now though, take a moment to explore AvaRx, our ABPI compliance prototype, and envision how this innovation could evolve. Imagine a comprehensive compliance assistant seamlessly guiding your team—from initial ideation, through content production, right up to final approvals -helping you permanently eliminate the 'compliance bottleneck' and enabling faster, smarter pharma communications.

Speeding Up Pharma Approvals with AI-powered ABPI ‘Quick Compliance Checker’