Keith Williams

During the past two decades, regulations have evolved in both Europe and the US to accommodate the technological developments in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries.

The adoption of computers into every aspect of the pharmaceutical industry has been enormous. Some estimates would put productivity and efficiency gains across the pharmaceutical industry at 2–3 times what they were previously. However, they are only just beginning to have an effect in the areas of training and document management, which have traditionally been managed by people and paper systems. With increasingly strict regulations and the growing complexity of processes and training requirements, there are even greater efficiency gains, as well as cost savings, to be achieved by adopting electronic document management systems (eDMS), learning management systems (LMS) and systems for the electronic signing of documents.