AI for medical affairs compared: medical information and PV literature

Medical affairs covers several jobs that AI vendors group under one label. Medical information answers physician questions. Field medical teams capture insights. Evidence teams search and summarise literature. Safety teams screen the literature for adverse events. A tool that does one of these often does not do the others.

This page compares seven products by what each vendor says on its own site in November 2026. Arca is one of them.

The jobs

Two rules that shape the work

Medical information is reactive. It answers unsolicited requests from healthcare professionals, including questions about unapproved uses. FDA's draft guidance on responding to unsolicited requests for off-label information dates from December 2011. Any AI that drafts answers needs a rule for classifying the inquiry, using only approved sources and routing what it should not answer.

Safety literature review has a clock. EMA's GVP Module VI expects marketing authorisation holders to review widely used reference databases such as Medline or Embase no less often than once a week. ICH E2D(R1), in effect in the EU since 18 March 2026, says the reporting clock starts when the company or its agent has enough information to meet the case criteria. A screening tool has to be fast and its decisions have to be traceable. See signal detection and PSUR.

What each vendor says

Veeva sells MedInquiry for medical information. Its page describes "agentic case processing" that "extracts information from unstructured inbound interactions and automatically creates Case Records," matches inquiries to preapproved responses and passes adverse events and complaints to Safety and Quality. Veeva Link Medical Insights generates themes from field insights "by AI with human oversight," and says each trend is linked to its source. Veeva says Falcon Router, which triages inquiries, adverse events and complaints, is planned for early adopters in January 2027.

IQVIA offers medical information mainly as a managed contact-center service. It says AI agents "work in tandem with skilled human agents" and that complex requests go to subject matter experts. It states 50 direct languages and more than 170 countries. Its page does not say which steps are AI.

Sorcero has a Medical product that unifies MSL notes, publications, congress data and advisory boards, and a Safety product that flags literature likely to contain individual case safety reports. It says "AI proposes, you approve" and states SOC 2 Type II and Part 11. Its two pages give different accuracy figures for ICSR detection, 96% and 92%, without saying how each was measured.

Indegene is an outsourcing firm with AI built into its medical information and pharmacovigilance services. It states cost and time reductions without naming the baseline.

ArisGlobal sells LifeSphere Literature Intelligence, which it says replaces manual screening with GenAI automation across PubMed, Medline and Embase and local literature. Its Medical Information product drafts AI responses "based on approved content and subject to agent review."

DistillerSR is literature review software. It offers AI screening and extraction, an audit log and an Embase integration, and it names SOC 2 Type II, Part 11 and Annex 11. Its pages state that AI Re-Rank cuts screening time by up to 70%, with no method given.

Cognizant runs pharmacovigilance as a service, including literature surveillance, and states more than 10,000 literature articles reviewed a year.

What the vendor pages leave out

• Citations in the answer. Veeva's MedInquiry page does not say whether a drafted response cites its source. Ask to see one.
• How accuracy was measured. Sorcero's two figures show why. Ask for the test set and the miss rate.
• Which databases. A weekly Medline and Embase search is the regulatory baseline. Check the list.
• What the AI cannot answer. A good tool refuses and routes. Ask what it does with an off-label question.

How Arca handles it

Arca is an enterprise agent OS for life sciences. Two built-in AOPs cover the work in this guide.

Medical Information and Virtual MSL. It classifies the inquiry as on-label or off-label, and as a medical question, a product complaint or an adverse event. It pulls grounded content from the approved label, your approved standard-response library and literature cleared for medical information use. For an on-label question it drafts a fair-balanced response with a citation for each statement. It routes off-label questions for handling, sends adverse events and complaints to safety and quality, and never generates promotional or off-label claims. The output includes a flag showing which route each inquiry took.

Pharmacovigilance Literature and Signal Triage. For each product or substance under surveillance, it retrieves new literature and cases since the last run, summarises each item with its source, assesses signal relevance such as a new adverse event or a change in frequency or severity, ranks priority, routes it to an owner and logs the result in a running signal log. It is not a causality determination. A safety physician decides.

For evidence work, Arca searches PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, FDA and other public sources, and Embase and Scopus through your institutional subscription. It can remove duplicate records and add papers to a library for a team to screen.

Where Arca differs from the vendors above: Arca is not a medical information case management system or a safety database. Keep the case record and the submission in your Veeva, Argus or other system of record. Arca drafts the answer and triages the literature on top of them.

Choosing

Choose Veeva MedInquiry if your medical information team already runs Vault. Choose IQVIA or Indegene if you want a service that runs the contact center. Choose Sorcero for field insights and congress and publication intelligence. Choose ArisGlobal if your safety team uses LifeSphere. Choose DistillerSR for a formal systematic review workflow with an audit log.

Choose Arca if you want cited, on-label medical information drafts and literature triage on the same platform that handles your regulatory and clinical documents, with routing rules for what it must not answer. For the regulatory side, see AI software for regulatory affairs. For the literature side, see AI literature research compared.

What to check in any tool

• Does the draft cite an approved source for every statement?
• What happens to an off-label question, an adverse event or a complaint?
• Which literature databases does it search, and how often?
• Can a reviewer open the source behind each screening decision?
• Who decides whether an item is a signal?
• Where does the record live after approval?

Frequently asked questions

What is the best AI for medical affairs?

It depends on the job. Veeva MedInquiry, IQVIA and ArisGlobal handle medical information. Sorcero focuses on insights and publication data. DistillerSR handles literature review. Arca drafts cited, on-label answers and triages safety literature.

Can AI answer medical information requests?

AI can draft a response from approved sources and flag what it should route elsewhere. A medical information professional reviews it. Arca classifies each inquiry and does not answer off-label questions substantively.

How does AI help with pharmacovigilance literature review?

It screens new papers for adverse events and potential signals and summarises them with sources. Arca's literature triage AOP ranks priority and routes each item, and a safety physician makes the causality call.

What literature databases must be monitored for pharmacovigilance?

GVP Module VI expects review of widely used reference databases such as Medline or Embase at least weekly, plus local literature where needed. Check current regional requirements for your products.

Does Arca replace a safety database or a medical information system?

No. It works alongside them. It drafts answers and triages literature, and your system of record keeps the case.