Veeva recently announced it will integrate artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into the Veeva Vault Platform and Veeva applications, which has the potential to transform how customers conduct business, affecting clinical, commercial, regulatory, quality, medical, and safety programs. These tools promise exciting operational benefits, empowering life science companies to better interpret their data, improve productivity, and shorten clinical timelines. Successfully implementing these capabilities is challenging, and organizations need to carefully consider and identify their operational goals, data structures, and compliance requirements to ensure alignment with Veeva’s new AI features. This piece will discuss Veeva’s current and future AI capabilities, the benefits and risks of AI implementation, and how you can prepare your organization to use this exciting technology.  

Veeva AI Progression  

Starting in 2019, Veeva Vault Auto Claims Linking adopted AI features to aid in development of content both in speed and compliance, as well as assistance in claim linking. Then, in 2020, Veeva CRM Approved Notes added AI functionality to aid with customer relations and detect any compliance risks and is included in Veeva CRM. Both have become widely adopted tools for life science organizations.  

Targeting the end of 2025, Veeva is expanding its AI footprint with the recent introduction of two powerful new tools: AI Agents and AI Shortcuts. AI Agents are application-specific with secure access to Vault data, documents, and workflows to support nuanced responses. Pre-built AI Agents are available for common, high-impact use cases such as detecting missing metadata in submission documents and summarizing deviation reports. Custom AI Agents can also be tailored to an organization’s unique processes or proprietary framework. These agents can be used to support unique workflows, integrate with external systems, or enable multi-lingual functionality.  

AI Shortcuts are user-defined automations that leverage AI to automate repetitive tasks. This low-risk capability is beneficial to all teams regardless of technical level. It also empowers users to apply AI to their specific needs, without coding knowledge and minimal help from IT. Shortcuts can assist with activities such as supporting workflow completion and research defined topics. Veeva can provide a large language model (LLM); however, other LLMs can be supported. 

Also, by the end of this year, Veeva has plans to release two new AI bots – Vault CRM Bot and MLR Bot for Vault PromoMats.  

Veeva Vault CRM is an application that sales and commercial field teams use to build and manage relationships with healthcare providers (HCP). The CRM Bot will provide the ability for generative AI to analyze the data stored in Vault CRM. This tool will be instrumental in preparing for customer interactions and streamlining workflows. It will also offer a new AI-powered voice control feature that is dependent on Apple Intelligence to use voice commands for CRM operations and capturing critical information using hands-free operations.  

The MLR Bot will be used as a solution for regulatory affairs and marketing teams to accelerate and standardize medical, legal, and regulatory (MLR) review processes in the Vault PromoMats environment. This tool will identify spelling and grammar errors and validate marketing materials against brand and market guidelines.  

Operational Benefits and Risks 

Veeva’s current and future AI capabilities offer substantial efficiency and compliance benefits across quality, regulatory, and commercial operations. Quality teams can use Vault Quality AI agents and shortcuts to reduce manual documentation time such as summarizing deviation reports, supporting risk mitigation, and identifying corrective action preventative action (CAPA) trends for continuous improvement. 

Commercial teams are also beginning to see benefits from these capabilities. Improvements in the way sales reps plan and manage HCP relationships will make meetings more efficient and help reduce administrative overhead.  

Validating AI applications is challenging due to their inherent issues with reproducibility and transparency; therefore, implementing these capabilities carries inherent risks that can be mitigated with careful planning and oversight. GxP compliance and data governance are the primary concerns when implementing AI tools. Maintaining compliance becomes more challenging when data governance controls do not clearly define appropriate AI usage and ensure user roles are properly defined and assigned.  

How Organizations Can Prepare 

To prepare an organization for the use of Veeva AI, it’s critical to assess the current state of operations and compare that with the business goals, compliance needs, and future state. This will ensure the right technology, LLM, and AI usage will meet the needs. As with any AI tool, it is only as good as the data, and a data assessment should be carried out. It may be necessary to adopt new procedures or modify procedures to ensure the data is streamlined, accurate, consistent, and robust. 

While Veeva will have many AI tools to offer, it is important to choose the right option for your specific organization. Clarkston Consulting, a Veeva consulting partner, has a deep understanding of the life sciences industry, life science technologies, and experience to help guide the journey to AI.