How Omnichannel Design Systems help pharma scale content across every channel

Most omnichannel strategies are undermined by inconsistency. A healthcare professional might move from a brand site to an email, then to an eDetail or a patient support tool, and each touch point feels slightly different. Tone changes, layouts shift, interactions work in different ways, and key elements aren’t always recognisable.

For teams aiming to build trust and reduce friction, this creates real problems. A Design System provides the foundation needed to bring everything together.

A strong omnichannel Design System helps to:

• Align the experience across every channel
• Reduce rework when creating content for new touch points
• Improve compliance through pre-approved components
• Reduce delivery time by giving teams a shared, scalable toolkit
• Maintain recognisable and consistent brand and product identity

Without this foundation, omnichannel engagement becomes a series of disconnected efforts rather than a genuine ecosystem.

Many Design Systems in pharma are still heavily web-centric. They start with page templates and UI components for websites and then, over time, get stretched into other channels. By then, the structure is usually too narrow to scale cleanly.

Omnichannel Design Systems look beyond web from day one. They’re built with the expectation that components and patterns could appear in:

• Email campaigns and marketing automation journeys
• eDetails and field team materials
• Paid and organic social media formats
• Patient and HCP apps
• Banners and digital display
• In-platform content within third-party tools
• Connected services such as learning resources

Each of these channels has different constraints and behaviours. A successful omnichannel Design System anticipates them and defines guidelines that work across formats, not just screens.

For example:

• Typography needs variants that work in small, high-impact formats like banners or social.
• Colour usage needs accessibility guidance that holds up across light and dark environments.
• Components must adapt to interactive and non-interactive settings.
• Motion, transitions, and micro-interactions require rules that map cleanly from apps to emails or web.

Thinking this way prevents design drift and gives teams a shared framework to build on.

Pharma teams rarely create content once. Assets are adapted across markets, rolled out in waves, or refreshed as new data becomes available. A good Design System makes this easier by accounting for the lifecycle of content.

Long-term scalability means:

• Designing components that can be reused and adapted across multiple channels
• Building in flexibility for localisation without compromising brand identity
• Creating documentation that covers channel-specific behaviours
• Defining core patterns that work across devices and contexts
• Allowing room for new channels and formats to be introduced later

This future-focused approach reduces fragmentation over time. It also gives teams a more confident foundation for experimentation because they’re not reinventing elements for every new initiative.

AI is beginning to influence how teams create, adapt, and scale content across channels. Design Systems sit at the centre of this shift.

When built well, a Design System can act as the source of truth that AI tools draw from. This means:

• Automated generation of variations for social, email, or banners using approved components
• Faster adaptation of content for different markets and languages
• More consistent application of brand and regulatory guidance
• Intelligent recommendations for the most effective components or layouts based on performance data

As AI becomes more embedded in content workflows across pharma, Design Systems will become even more important. They provide the structure and guardrails needed to ensure AI-generated outputs remain compliant, consistent, and high quality.

In the next few years, we’re likely to see Design Systems and AI working closely together to speed up omnichannel execution while maintaining the standards that teams rely on.

If you want your Design System to support omnichannel engagement, it helps to think beyond the immediate project. A few principles make a meaningful difference:

• Start with a shared language for components, patterns, and behaviours across channels
• Document channel variations early, even if some are placeholders
• Bring brand teams, CRM teams, medical reviewers, and field teams into the process
• Test early with HCPs and patients to understand how patterns perform across contexts
• Create governance that supports teams operating at different speeds
• Design for the channels you use today and the ones you’ll likely need tomorrow

This approach stops the system from becoming web-only and gives it the room it needs to influence the full engagement journey.