Document metadata is a critical component of any life sciences Content Management System (CMS). Each element within the structure is vital to the document history, and ensures the document is properly stored and managed throughout its lifecycle.
These are just a few of the key types of metadata required on each document stored by life sciences firms:
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- Title: The title of a document provides important information about the content and purpose of the document.
- Author: The author of a document provides valuable information about the origin and credibility of the scientific data contained within the document.
- Date: The date of a document provides valuable information about the age and relevance of the scientific data contained within the document.
- Keywords: Keywords provide valuable information about the content and context of the scientific data contained within the document.
- Regulatory Information: Regulatory information provides valuable information about the compliance of the document with relevant regulations and guidelines.
- Scientific Data: Scientific data provides valuable information about the results, methodology, and analysis contained within the document.
Unfortunately, this valuable information about the content, structure and context of documents is often disconnected or lost in storage, translation, or migration to and from different systems. Over time, it becomes increasingly difficult to locate, share, and utilize critical information.
Fixing metadata is a larger problem
Many organizations don’t recognize the extent of the problem until they plan a consolidation or migration project. When preparing their content for an updated or new platform, they realize the amount of information that is either missing or incomplete. They also discover the volume of effort required to review, identify and update this information across their content library. Shifting key business resources to spend hundreds of hours on tedious content review and metadata updates isn’t going to be beneficial to anyone’s business goals, but disorganized content will cause any ‘content management system’ to feel more like ‘content maybe somewhere.’ This quickly becomes a high-risk situation when the company has committed resources to a larger platform project.
Facing project delays, many companies decide to take the ‘just make it work, and we’ll fix it later’ approach, contributing additional risk to a backlog of work for future admin teams. Eventually, this will fail. There is a better way.
fme MetadataAssist™ is the solution
Staffed with life sciences content experts, fme MetadataAssist™ service is a value-adding solution that supplements your team to rescue disconnected content. With a proprietary process and customized workflows, we save your team hundreds of hours of tedious content review and metadata updates, and deliver an accessible library of essential information. Your content can then be properly filed in in your CMS for accurate search results or migrated to a consolidated solution.
If you are consolidating volumes of legacy content, fme MetadataAssist™ is a unique solution that can address large amounts of data while reducing or eliminating the historically high-level of business involvement. For companies that are migrating to a new platform, fme MetadataAssist™ can streamline your migration, minimizing costs and reducing timelines for your entire team.
Conclusion
Accurate metadata is a critical component of any document management system within a life science company. By reviewing and updating the metadata in your documents, you can improve searchability, enhance collaboration, facilitate regulatory compliance, preserve and archive critical scientific data, and extract insights from scientific data to drive innovation and improve research outcomes.
To learn more about fme MetadataAssist™, contact us to schedule a time to discuss your current document and metadata challenges. We’ll share a few of our recent projects, and show how fme can help you reclaim the value lost in your document library.
About the author
David Gwyn is a strategic, creative, and data-driven Business Development and Technology Specialist with extensive expertise in building key partnerships, implementing business strategies, and deploying solutions across the life science and emerging technology industries. In October 2021 he joined fme US as the Business Unit Director for Business Consulting. For the past 30 years, he has led teams in the delivery of content management, clinical, and quality solutions with a recent focus on end-to-end Regulatory Information Management (RIM). His practice has evolved in parallel to the Life Sciences industry, moving from custom-developed software solutions to packaged-based implementations, and the development of methodologies and best practices to guide practitioners in realizing the greatest return on investment. Mr. Gwyn is passionate about helping organizations evolve from traditional to digital businesses and increase their ability to act with speed and agility.