Common Data Architecture for Life Sciences (CDA)

The Common Data Architecture for Life Sciences (CDA) is a new industry standard for referring to HCPs, HCOs, clinical operations, and products and diseases.

All life sciences organizations can use CDA to communicate and collaborate more effectively with each other using these universal data components.

For more information about this open standard, see veeva.com/cda/.

Key highlights

  • CDA is freely available for all life sciences organizations to implement and use.

  • Vault CRM, Network, and OpenData have adopted the CDA HCP and HCO kernels.

  • The CDA kernels contain the following components: entities (HCPs, HCOs, Addresses), attributes, and picklists.

    Note: The Segment object from the HCP and HCO kernels are not currently added to Network.

  • For existing customers that integrate with Veeva CRM, there are no changes; CDA fields will be off by default.

  • OpenData will provide values for most CDA fields on the HCP, HCO, and Address objects on OpenData records.

  • For locally managed (gray) records and third-party managed records, Network provides the ability to calculate CDA fields based on the legacy fields.

  • Data change requests can be submitted for CDA fields.

Country support

CDA is available for most countries supported by Veeva OpenData.

These countries are not supported:

  • China

  • Hong Kong

  • Japan

  • Macao

About the CDA in Network

Network supports the following kernels:

The kernels contain entities, attributes, and picklists.

The related Address entity is included in the HCP and HCO kernels.

Enable CDA in Network

To use CDA in Network, there are two settings:

  • Enable CDA Data Model

  • Enable CDA Sync

Enable the CDA data model

Important: Required for existing Network instances only.
The CDA data model is enabled by default for new Network instances.

Administrators can enable CDA fields for their existing Network instance when they are ready to begin adopting this new standard.

To enable the fields:

  1. Enable CDA Data Model - Enable all CDA data model fields for HCPs, HCOs, and Addresses.

    This setting cannot be turned off after it has been enabled. Individual fields can be turned off in the data model.

    Note: The Veeva ID field (veevaid__v) is enabled by default in all Network instances, even if the CDA data model is not enabled.

  2. Enable the HCO kernel - Required only if you enabled CDA before the HCO Kernel was available.

    • Enable the HCO CDA fields (Data Model > Customer Master > Health Care Organization).

Enable CDA sync

Enable the feature to populate locally managed CDA fields.

  • Select Enable CDA Sync (Settings > General Settings).

This setting does the following:

  • Syncs the calculated CDA fields with legacy fields in your Network instance. It applies only to CDA fields that are locally managed.

  • Turns on the workflow process for the CDA data model.

Note: This setting does not need to be enabled in your instance to get data from OpenData in CDA fields.

When the feature is enabled, complete the following tasks to populate CDA fields.

  1. Populate the Veeva-managed CDA fields - For each OpenData country subscription, run the Update all records setting.

    The next time the subscription runs, those CDA fields will be populated.

    For details, see Populate CDA fields on OpenData records.

  2. Resync locally managed records - To populate the calculated CDA fields on local records, run a Data Updater job or source subscription to touch or update the records.

    This will trigger the CDA Sync process to populate the CDA fields with the values from the legacy fields.

CDA field ownership

CDA fields for HCPs, HCOs, and Addresses can be Veeva-managed or locally managed.

For details, see CDA data model fields.

OpenData managed CDA fields

Veeva managed CDA field values will be pushed to your Network instance through your OpenData subscriptions or ad hoc downloads as usual.

Note: The CDA Sync setting does not need to be enabled in your Network instance to receive OpenData in these CDA fields.

Populate CDA fields on OpenData records

After you enable at least one CDA field in your Network instance, run a full OpenData country subscription to update all records that are downloaded in your Network instance.

To run a full update:

  1. Open an OpenData country subscription (System Interfaces > OpenData Subscriptions).

  2. In the Updates to OpenData records section, select Update all records.

  3. Save your changes.

The next time the subscription runs, you will receive updates for all the OpenData managed CDA fields that you have enabled.

Report on countries that need CDA field updates from OpenData

To identify which countries need to be updated, run a query to see the records that do not have the veevaid__v field populated.

HCP query 

SELECT
        primary_country__v,
        COUNT (*)
    FROM
        hcp
    WHERE
        veevaid__v IS NULL
        AND record_owner_type__v = 'VOD'
    GROUP BY
        primary_country__v
    ORDER BY
        COUNT (*) DESC

HCO query 

SELECT
        primary_country__v,
        COUNT (*)
    FROM
        hco
    WHERE
        veevaid__v IS NULL
        AND record_owner_type__v = 'VOD'
    GROUP BY
        primary_country__v
    ORDER BY
        COUNT (*) DESC

Example

After running the HCP query, you can see that there are US and UK records that need to be updated.

On the UK and US OpenData subscription configuration, choose the Update all records setting.

The next time the subscription runs, all Veeva-managed CDA fields that are enabled in your Network instance will be populated on the records.

CDA Sync Calculation

Network supports the legacy fields and the new CDA fields. CDA Sync is a process that runs in the backend on your Network instance to calculate the values from the legacy fields to the locally managed CDA fields.

For more details, see CDA Sync.

Vault CRM - Network integration

Vault CRM, Network, and OpenData support the CDA HCP and HCO kernels, so you can view and manage CDA fields between these applications.

Supported integration features

  • Vault CRM Bridge

  • Data change requests

For information about CDA and Vault CRM, see Vault CRM: Data Model Updates for CDA.