From brand sites to unified portals: Why pharma is consolidating its digital ecosystems

For years, pharma’s digital presence has been sprawling. Every product, every therapy area, and often every market had its own website. What seemed logical at the time — giving each brand a dedicated home — has resulted in a landscape that is fragmented and difficult to navigate. Healthcare professionals (HCPs) encounter inconsistent user journeys. Companies duplicate effort across sites. And digital teams are left maintaining large portfolios of platforms, each with their own quirks.

That picture is now starting to change. Across the industry, there’s a shift toward consolidation. Instead of launching and managing dozens of brand-specific sites, more companies are creating unified digital homes for HCPs and, in some cases, patients. Global HCP platforms are emerging as the new standard, offering a single place where professionals can find information, tools, and support across a company’s portfolio.

Why the change is happening

The drivers of this move are both practical and strategic. Efficiency is a big one. Maintaining separate websites for every product is costly and resource-heavy. A central platform allows teams to reuse infrastructure, design templates, and content modules at scale.

Consistency is another. HCPs are increasingly accustomed to seamless digital experiences in other areas of their professional and personal lives. They want clarity, familiarity, and ease of navigation. A unified portal offers this, while also signalling professionalism and credibility.

There’s also a governance angle. From a compliance perspective, fewer sites mean fewer risks to manage. Centralised approval workflows and design systems bring greater oversight and control. And, importantly, customers themselves are asking for simplicity. Many HCPs have expressed frustration at having to jump between multiple pharma sites to find prescribing information, clinical trial data, or educational content. One destination, clearly structured, is simply more practical.

Pharma is not alone in this evolution. Other industries have been through a similar shift. Automotive brands, for example, create multiple products, but present them within a unified brand ecosystem. You don’t see a separate website for every model of car; instead, each sits comfortably within a single digital experience that reinforces the brand’s identity. The same is true for consumer giants like Nike, where sub-brands such as Jordan, Air Max, and ACG each have their own personality, but exist harmoniously under the wider Nike umbrella. These companies understand that coherence strengthens identity, and that giving customers one recognisable, reliable destination makes discovery and engagement easier. Pharma is now beginning to follow suit.

The key advantages

For HCPs, the benefits are obvious. Time is always in short supply. Navigating a patchwork of sites with different log-ins and structures adds unnecessary friction. A single portal reduces this, making the experience more straightforward and trustworthy. When every brand follows the same design logic, professionals know where to find the information they need. When all resources are gathered in one place, the experience feels comprehensive and complete.

For pharma companies, consolidation creates operational efficiency. Content management becomes less about duplication and more about scale. Centralised analytics provide a clearer view of how users engage across therapy areas. Adding new products or expanding into new markets becomes faster and easier once the framework is in place.

The main challenges with consolidation

Finding the right balance between unity and individuality is one of the biggest challenges of consolidation. Each therapy area or brand has its own story to tell and audience to engage, and that needs to come through clearly within a shared ecosystem. The goal isn’t to strip away brand personality, but to define the boundaries within which it can flex — allowing visual expression and storytelling to flourish inside a consistent user experience.

If that balance tips too far towards uniformity, experiences can begin to feel flat or generic. Over-standardisation risks creating a ‘template feel’, where sites look polished, but lack distinction. On the other hand, too much freedom can quickly erode consistency, making the experience confusing for users and complex to govern.

Governance itself becomes a central consideration. A unified platform needs clear structures for ownership, updates, and approvals. Without this, even well-intentioned teams can create bottlenecks or drift from the shared framework. And, while global consistency is appealing, the reality of delivering it across regions with different regulatory frameworks is complex. What’s compliant in the EU may need significant adaptation for the US, and vice versa.

The US perspective

The US presents a particularly interesting case. Direct-to-consumer advertising is permitted, which has shaped expectations around brand-specific websites. Patients often expect to find detailed information on a branded site, and companies are legally obliged to provide it. That means brand sites are likely to remain a feature of the US digital landscape.

For HCPs, however, the same frustrations exist. They too value simplicity and efficiency. While individual brand sites will persist in the US, consolidated professional portals are growing in importance as a complement. The balance is delicate. Over-consolidation risks clashing with regulatory norms and patient expectations, while under-consolidation perpetuates inefficiency. For global teams, the most pragmatic solution is often a hybrid approach: global design standards applied flexibly to meet local requirements.

Regulation: The biggest hurdle

Regulation is the single biggest factor shaping how and how far consolidation can go. A global HCP portal has to satisfy multiple approval processes, from the FDA in the US to EMA rules in Europe, plus local affiliate requirements. Data privacy adds another layer, with GDPR in Europe, HIPAA in the US, and country-specific rules elsewhere. And there are divergent standards on promotional versus non-promotional content to contend with.

This can slow global projects considerably, and it can create resistance from local teams who feel their compliance obligations are not fully understood. Yet, centralised platforms can actually make regulatory life easier. By using pre-approved design systems, structured workflows, and clear audit trails, companies can reduce the risk of errors while speeding up reviews. The challenge is less about whether it’s possible, and more about building regulatory confidence early in the process.

What good looks like

The companies getting this right tend to share a few common features. They place design systems at the heart of their approach, so that compliant, reusable components can be deployed across markets without constant reinvention. They adopt hybrid governance models that provide a global framework while giving local teams the flexibility to adapt content for their own needs. They embed user research into the process, testing early and often with HCPs to ensure portals are built around real needs, rather than internal assumptions.

Most importantly, they put trust first. Transparency, clarity, and evidence-led content are essential. Trust in pharma is fragile. A unified digital experience only works if users believe it is reliable, objective, and designed to make their lives easier.

Looking ahead

The move towards consolidation is more than a technical or operational trend. It’s cultural. It signals a sector that is now recognising digital not as a secondary channel, but as the front door to engagement with HCPs.

The future may not be a single global platform for every company. The realities of regulation, culture, and market structure will always demand a degree of flexibility. But the direction of travel is clear. Fewer, more connected platforms are replacing sprawling webs of disconnected sites. For design leaders, the challenge is to make these consolidated experiences not just efficient, but genuinely valuable, combining simplicity with trust, and coherence with creativity.

If pharma can achieve that balance, its digital presence will start to reflect the same standard of quality and rigour that it demonstrates in science. And that, ultimately, is what HCPs, patients, and the wider health ecosystem need.

About the author

Edward Hart leads on design across Graphite Digital, supporting the company’s teams of UX, UI, and product designers to create innovative digital solutions. He has plays a significant role in delivering core digital products and design systems, scaling across brands and markets.