SDL to speed up compliance for pharma firm

Translation software and services provider SDL has won a £300,000 contract with pharmaceutical GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to provide technology that will speed up the product checking process with regulator the European Medicines Agency (Emea).

The deal means GSK can submit products for review in 20 European languages at the same time, tracking changes made from the authoring stage – a key requirement for compliance regulations.

To do this, SDL is helping GSK to move product information to electronic format in an XML standard, PIM, set by the Emea. GSK is said to be one of the first adopters of the standard.

Stephen Hasler, VP of operations and systems at GSK, said: "SDL has demonstrated thorough understanding of the technical and business issues involved and we anticipate significant time-to-market advantages once this new solution is implemented."

GSK will also use SDL's centralised translation memory to reuse any previously translated content.