Advancing Pharmaceutical Regulatory Operations through Digital Submission Technologies: A Framework for Global Compliance
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Abstract
This article explores the shift in pharmaceutical regulatory operations from document-based submissions relying on the electronic Common Technical Document of version 3.2.2 to data-based concepts underpinned by eCTD of version 4.0, which is based on the HL7 Regulated Product Submission standard with ISO Identification of Medicinal Products, Substance, Product, Organization, and Referential master data services. The core operational issues inherent in this transition process are then summarized, addressing the multi-year periods of cross-jurisdictional coexistence of both standards, the continual threat of gateway-level technical rejections due to errors in the XML backbone, metadata, and controlled vocabularies, as well as the inconsistent digital maturity of the principal regulatory bodies. A dual data-centric five-layer architecture to facilitate globally consistent compliance is supplemented by a five-level organizational maturity model, illustrative comparative jurisdictional timelines contrasting current requirements and future milestones, and a dual-pipeline implementation methodology which explicitly considers the transitional burden of operating parallel publishing environments. A brief description of the comparative regulatory methodology used and a transparent explanation of the study's limitations, especially regarding shifting agency timelines and the advisory nature of this framework, are provided.
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