Learnings from a MAPS 2026 Roundtable Discussion Hosted by CCC
At the MAPS 2026 meeting, CCC hosted a roundtable discussion focused on literature monitoring in medical affairs. Thirteen participants from thirteen companies joined the conversation, bringing a wide variety of perspectives shaped by company size, geographic footprint, therapeutic focus and organizational structure. The discussion also reflected global diversity, with participants from the United States, Brazil, and Japan.
Despite differences in organizational maturity, resources and therapeutic focus, the conversation quickly coalesced around a shared perspective that literature monitoring is mission-critical, but remains difficult to execute efficiently. Even with advances in search platforms, automation tools and artificial intelligence, many organizations continue to rely on highly manual workflows. These workflows are time consuming, difficult to scale, and prone to inconsistency, creating both operational burden and strategic risk.
This paper summarizes the key themes that emerged during the discussion, including the most pressing workflow challenges, evolving perspectives on AI, and copyright considerations.
The Mission-Critical Role of Literature Monitoring
Participants emphasized that literature monitoring supports a broad range of core activities. While many organizations historically associated literature monitoring primarily with safety surveillance or regulatory submissions, the discussion highlighted its expanding importance. Medical affairs teams rely on literature monitoring to support both reactive and proactive activities across the product lifecycle including:
- Supporting FDA and other regulatory submissions
- Monitoring clinical trials for competitor activity
- Responding to HCP inquiries
- Updating Standard Response Documents (SRDs) annually
- Addressing internal stakeholder questions
- Educating commercial teams on emerging data
- Preparing Medical Science Liaisons (MSLs) for interactions with HCPs
- Looking for data gaps to inform safety or strategy decisions
The wide scope of activities supported by literature monitoring reinforces that it’s a foundational function supporting multiple stakeholders and key business activities. Several participants noted that their literature monitoring outputs feed into publications planning, field medical training, launch readiness, and lifecycle strategy.
The Current State is Manual and Resource Intensive
Despite its importance, participants described workflows that remain largely manual. Teams typically conduct weekly searches across databases, manually review results, and then curate relevant publications for distribution to stakeholders. Outputs are often formatted into spreadsheets, tables, or email summaries before dissemination.
Participants described this process as time-consuming and difficult to scale. In some organizations, a single individual is responsible for reviewing hundreds of search results each week. In others, multiple team members divide therapeutic areas or product responsibilities. Regardless of structure, the burden remains significant.
Participants noted that manual workflows can make it difficult to maintain continuity. For example, search strategies may differ across team members. Additionally, when individuals change roles or leave the organization, knowledge about search logic, keyword strategy, and distribution practices can be lost, creating operational risk.
Too Much Information, Not Enough Precision
Another major theme was the challenge of managing volume. Participants consistently reported receiving a large volume of search results, making it difficult to identify the most relevant publications efficiently. While teams aim to be comprehensive in order to avoid missing safety signals, the resulting output often includes a large portion of irrelevant content. While overly board search strategies are often intentional in order to reduce risk, this approach increases operational burden.
Keyword Strategy Remains a Persistent Challenge
Closely related to volume is the challenge of developing effective keyword strategies. Participants reported that identifying the right search terms is difficult and often requires iterative refinement. As therapeutic areas evolve, new mechanisms emerge, and competitor pipelines change, ongoing updates to search logic must be managed.
Companies also differ in how they manage search governance. Some maintain centralized search strategies, while others allow teams to develop their own. In decentralized models, variability increases, and duplication of effort may occur.
This challenge is compounded by the variance in terminology. Identifying whether a publication relates to a specific product or competitor asset requires careful review.
Keeping Pace with Publication Volume
Switching between multiple platforms was another commonly cited challenge. Teams often use different databases for journals, conference abstracts, clinical trials and internal
repositories. Moving between systems slows workflows and increases the likelihood of missed information.
Participants described copying results from one platform into another, manually consolidating outputs, and formatting information for dissemination. These time consuming steps add little strategic value, yet they remain necessary in many organizations.
The lack of integration between search, review, and dissemination tools also creates inefficiencies. Even when automation exists for search retrieval, downstream processes such as formatting tables or preparing summaries are often manual.
Fragmented Technology Environments
Participants also emphasized the difficulty of staying current with the pace of new publications. With increasing numbers of journals, preprints, conference presentations, and real-world evidence outputs, the volume of literature continues to grow.
The growth places additional pressure on teams to review and share information quickly. Delays in dissemination can reduce the value of insights, particularly in competitive therapeutic areas where new data emerge frequently.
Some participants noted that stakeholders expect near real-time updates, while existing workflows are structured around weekly or monthly cycles. This mismatch creates tension and highlights the need for more efficient approaches.
Hope for the Future: Automation and Integration (and AI)
When discussing future improvements, participants consistently expressed interest in greater automation. Specifically, they highlighted the potential benefits of:
- Reducing manual screening effort
- Minimizing human error
- Allowing natural language search capabilities
- Streamlining formatting and dissemination
- Creating end-to-end workflows from search to communication
Participants described an ideal state in which it’s less time consuming to identify, categorize and distribute content to stakeholders – but keeping a human in the loop at all stages. In this vision, outputs could feed directly into presentations, briefing documents and training materials.
Several participants also expressed interest in tools that could organize information thematically, identify trends and highlight potential data gaps. Such capabilities would shift literature monitoring from a reactive task to a more strategic activity.
INTERESTED IN HOSTING A ROUNDTABLE?
This article summarizes a Roundtable hosted by a MAPS Partner Circle member that brought together leading experts from across the industry. If you are a solution provider interested in hosting your own Roundtable – in-person or virtually – please check out our Media Planner or contact Luke with MAPS: [email protected].
