The Content Strategy Experts Podcast recently published a conversation between Rich Dominelli, system architect at DCL, and Alan Pringle, COO at Scriptorium. They chatted about one of the biggest topics of the year–AI. Rich helps put AI in perspective: "I feel like people anthropomorphize AI a lot. They’re having a conversation with their program and they assume that the program has needs and wants and desires that it’s trying to fulfill, or even worse, that it has your best interest at heart when really, what’s going on behind the scenes is that it’s just a statistical model that’s large enough that people don’t really understand what’s going on. It’s a model of weights and it’s emitting what it thinks you want to the best of its ability. It has no desires or needs or agency of its own."

In the past 4 years, we’ve seen increased interest in structured content but not yet the strategic, industry-wide adoption of structured content management (SCM) methodologies and tools. DCL and Content Rules are surveying the pharma writing landscape to obtain data-driven metrics regarding medical, regulatory, and scientific writing practices. We strive to better understand the challenges and obstacles prohibiting pharma and life sciences from adopting SCM tools, technology, and workflows. Results of the survey will be presented in a webinar later this year. Lend us your voice if you take part in any writing in the pharma and life sciences space.

Migrating content to a new platform can be a stressful experience. But it doesn't have to be! Tools, technology, and workflows have changed dramatically in just the past few years. The publishing ecosystem also offers helpful guidance and best practices. Crossref offers publishers a plan for platform migration as well as a detailed checklist. Both documents help organizations ask the right questions of a content hosting provider when selecting a new platform. This great resource will help you prepare for the move, and gives hints and tips for managing the actual process as smoothly as possible. 

Project Blue Book is the U.S. Air Force's (USAF) investigation into UFOs between June 1947 and December 1969. The National Archives Catalog recently published a collection of physical specimens and artifacts related to Project Blue Book. The artifacts have related case files that contain reports from individuals who submitted the items, their correspondence with the Air Force, and reports of analyses of the objects themselves. Each artifact was provided a unique identifying Physical Specimen number and Artifact number by the USAF Technical Intelligence Division and its successors. Fox Mulder would be so invested in this catalog!

Structured Product Labeling (SPL) and Structured Product Monograph (SPM) are two industry XML standards for pharmacologic product labeling information. SPL is an XML standard required by the FDA in the United States while SPM is Health Canada’s new XML standard for drug product monographs. Both are used to facilitate the communication of drug labeling data reliability among various groups such as the other health authorities, hospitals, prescribing organizations, doctors, and the public. DCL employs two leading experts on these specifications and other applications of structured content for drug labeling---Howard Shatz and David Turner. In this recorded webinar they detail the intricacies of each XML specification as well as the big picture of business benefits structured content brings to pharma.