Designing Docuvera: Achieving 145% ROI in Life Sciences Documentation
Transforming Regulatory Workflows with a robust component authoring platform.
Project Summary
Challenge
Core Problems
The life sciences industry faced inefficient documentation workflows that contributed to the $250 million (25% of the $1 billion) cost of bringing a new drug to market. These workflows were driven by poor content reuse and disparate systems for storing, editing, reviewing, and approving updates.
Manual processes, such as copying and pasting, lead to errors, redundancy, and delays, while cumbersome tools like Microsoft Word hinder collaboration across departments, complicating updates and compliance.
Medical authors must create and manage highly complex, regulated documents, such as this sample USPI document (PDF, 676 KB).
Role & Approach
Role
Founding designer at Author-it Software for Docuvera, taking the product from 0 to launch.
Duration
2014 - 2017
UIs and workflows are delivered in phases: rebranding, editing, library, reviews, and approvals, ending with the MVP launch.
Work included:
User research
Branding
Design system
UI designs
Prototypes
Solutions
Delivered
Docuvera addresses the workflow challenges by streamlining content reuse, enabling multi-format publishing (Word, PDF, HTML), and ensuring regulatory compliance with clear audit trails.
Its intuitive interface simplifies the transition from traditional tools, enhancing collaboration and reducing costs.
Delivered:
Product identity design
Design system
Library UI
Editor UI & workflow
Reviewer UI & workflow
Approval UI & workflow
Impacts
Docuvera revolutionized life sciences documentation by transforming complex regulatory workflows into an intuitive, component-based authoring system. By reducing errors, inefficiencies, and drug release costs, the platform achieved 85% content reuse and delivered a 145% ROI for major life sciences companies. With its structured authoring, multi-format publishing, and compliance features, Docuvera established a new industry standard widely adopted by leading organizations such as Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim.
Recent Update
On May 25, 2025, Docuvera was acquired by Bertelsmann Investments!Featured UIs from the Launched Product
NOTE: Another designer, Mark Wilson, has continued to evolve the Docuvera experience since I left the company, and many of those changes are seen in the images below. This includes visual design changes to commenting and the evolution of collaborative authoring.
The core experience remains unchanged since I initially designed it.
Editor UI
The Editor is the core workspace for medical authors. The author has turned on the project structure display in the UI above.
Editor UI in Split View
The split view of the Editor allows the writer to compare the current document with another source, such as a Core Data Sheet.
Collaborative Authoring
The example shows the Screens of two authors editing portions of the same document simultaneously (Steve on the left and Alice on the right).
Robust Commenting
The example above shows two users commenting on a specific component. Authors can comment on selected components or at the project level.
Easy Document Approval Process
Document reviewers can select from different viewing formats, including web and print. After reviewing the document, they can approve or reject it and provide a reason for their decision.
An Approved Document
The author can easily see that this document has been approved and can't be edited.
Library UI
The Library view enables users to easily locate documents and view their status (Draft, In Review, Approved), as well as other metadata.
Showing an Approved Component
This example shows a selected component that had already been approved. The author can edit it by creating a new version.
Easily Find Approved Content to Reuse
The author can easily find approved components to reuse from a source document, such as a Core Data Sheet (shown on the right).
Drag & Drop Approved Components Into the New Document
The author can easily drag and drop an approved component from another source, such as the Core Data Sheet, into their document.
See Docuvera in Action
Steve Owens, CEO at Docuvera, narrates this product overview of the product in action. (4:35 min )