CASUS is a Swiss legal AI platform that automatically reviews pharma contracts for risks, regulatory compliance, and missing standard clauses. Key modules include Risk & Quality Review for individual contracts, Benchmark comparison against internal playbooks, and an AI Data Room for parallel analysis of entire contract portfolios. All data is hosted exclusively in Switzerland or the EU, with no transfer to the US.
Why pharma contracts are particularly complex
Pharma contracts face regulatory pressure from multiple directions at once. Licensing agreements, Clinical Trial Agreements, co-promotion contracts, supply agreements, and pharmacovigilance agreements each carry specific compliance requirements - nationally and internationally.
In Switzerland, the Therapeutic Products Act (HMG), Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), and increasingly the requirements of the EU AI Act apply when contractual partners operate in the EU. Data protection obligations under the revised Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) and the GDPR add another layer whenever personal health data is involved.
For legal teams, this means every contract typically has several potential problem areas: missing liability caps, incomplete data protection clauses, poorly defined IP rights over research results. Checking these manually is time-consuming, error-prone, and scales poorly when dozens of contracts need to be handled in parallel.
What AI-supported contract review can do in the pharma industry
AI contract review in the pharma context means structured, traceable analysis of contractual risks - not a replacement for legal judgment, but systematic preparation.
Concretely, an AI tool like CASUS can:
Identify clauses that deviate from an internal standard (playbook), such as a confidentiality clause without a deletion obligation or a liability provision without a cap.
Flag missing regulatory areas: Is a pharmacovigilance clause absent from a supply agreement? Is IP ownership undefined for jointly developed compounds?
Prioritize findings by severity (low / medium / high), so legal teams know where immediate action is needed.
Provide concrete drafting options per finding that can be applied directly in Microsoft Word.
With the Benchmark module in CASUS, the document under review is checked against a reference standard. The output is a match percentage plus a structured list of deviations. For pharma legal teams that work with standardized contract templates, this is a direct practical tool.
How does risk analysis work for complex pharma contracts?
CASUS analyzes the contract from each party's perspective - not in generic terms.
The Risk & Quality Review identifies which party bears which risk and assigns findings accordingly. In a Clinical Trial Agreement, for example, the sponsor typically carries different risks than the investigator site. CASUS reflects this party perspective in the analysis rather than producing a generic list of red flags.
Each finding includes: the affected clause, the party to which the risk is assigned, the severity level, and a concrete improvement suggestion. Users working in Microsoft Word can insert the suggestion with a single click - correctly formatted and placed at the right point in the document.
Teams interested in trying CASUS can sign up for free at app.getcasus.com/signup. No prior experience with prompting or AI tools is required.
Large contract portfolios: how does the AI Data Room help?
Pharma companies often manage hundreds of active contracts simultaneously: supplier agreements, licensing deals, MSAs with CROs, distributor agreements across multiple markets. Manual compliance control across such a portfolio is not realistic.
The AI Data Room in CASUS enables parallel upload and structured extraction of information from many documents. Legal teams define what should be extracted - liability caps, contract durations, notice periods, or data protection clauses, for instance - and receive the results as a table.
Anomalies are flagged: a liability clause without a cap, a notice period exceeding 24 months, a missing data protection annex. The output can be processed directly in Excel or used as the basis for internal compliance reports.
For the data protection use case in pharma, this is particularly relevant: contracts involving health data face heightened requirements. CASUS can identify personal data and sensitive data categories within the contract text and help prioritize anonymization measures.
What AI chat means for contract compliance work
Beyond the structured review workflows, CASUS includes an AI Chat with Agent Mode. This is a concrete working step, not a gimmick.
A team reviewing a clinical trial agreement and wanting to know which termination provisions appear in which section gets an answer with a direct link to the relevant passage. When a missing clause needs to be added - a pharmacovigilance reporting clause, for example - the instruction can be executed via chat. Agent Mode places the change at the correct position in the document, respecting numbering and structure.
For compliance checks where specific text passages matter, this navigation is substantially faster than manual document review.
Data protection and security: what pharma companies need to know
Pharma contracts frequently contain highly sensitive content: compound data, trial results, patient data in annexes, strategic partnerships. The question of where that data ends up during AI analysis is legitimate.
CASUS hosts all data exclusively in Switzerland or the EU. There is no data transfer to the US. Zero Data Retention means uploaded documents are not stored after analysis. There is no human review - no one at CASUS reads the uploaded contracts.
For more detail on technical security standards, the CASUS security page provides further information.
AI and regulatory requirements: what is realistic?
AI-supported contract review does not replace regulatory approval consulting, regulatory submissions, or decisions about a product's legal compliance. Those tasks belong to specialists with regulatory expertise.
What AI can do: systematically improve document quality, surface gaps and deviations, and accelerate preparation for legal reviews. In the pharma industry, where a single error in a trial agreement or supply contract can have costly consequences, that is meaningful support - no more, but no less.
CASUS outputs are source-based, structured, and traceable. Legal teams can see which clause was reviewed, what the finding is, and why a risk exists. That is a different starting point from a generic AI summary with no reference to specific text passages.
Getting started with CASUS
Legal teams that regularly review pharma contracts can use CASUS directly in the browser or as a Microsoft Word add-in. The platform requires no technical background in AI or prompting. A free trial is available at app.getcasus.com/signup.
Those who want to explore the Benchmark module or the AI Data Room first will find concrete workflow descriptions on the respective product pages.
FAQ
What does AI compliance in pharma contracts mean?
AI compliance in pharma contracts refers to using AI tools to systematically check whether contract clauses meet regulatory requirements, internal standards, or best practices - for example on data protection, liability, IP provisions, or pharmacovigilance obligations.
Which pharma contracts benefit most from AI-supported review?
Clinical Trial Agreements, supply agreements, licensing agreements, co-promotion contracts, and pharmacovigilance agreements are particularly well-suited, because they are regulatory-dense and require standardized clauses that can be efficiently checked against a playbook.
Can CASUS check regulatory approval requirements?
No. CASUS reviews contract clauses for risks, missing provisions, and deviations from standards. It does not replace regulatory approval consulting and does not make legal decisions. Outputs are source-based and traceable but must be assessed by qualified professionals.
How does CASUS protect data?
Data is hosted exclusively in Switzerland or the EU. There is no transfer to the US, zero data retention after analysis, and no human review by CASUS staff.
What is the difference between Risk & Quality Review and Benchmark in CASUS?
Risk & Quality Review analyzes an individual contract for risks and weaknesses from each party's perspective. Benchmark compares the document against a reference standard - such as an internal playbook - and shows which standard clauses are missing, incomplete, or deviating.
How many contracts can CASUS analyze at the same time?
With the AI Data Room, dozens to hundreds of documents can be uploaded and analyzed in parallel. Extraction follows user-defined fields and delivers a tabular output that can be processed further directly.
Is CASUS compatible with Swiss data protection law (FADP)?
CASUS hosts data in Switzerland and the EU, does not transfer data to the US, and offers zero data retention along with no human review. This aligns with the core requirements of the revised FADP for secure processing of personal data - though the specific data protection compliance assessment in each case remains the responsibility of the company using the platform.
Does CASUS work directly in Microsoft Word?
Yes. CASUS is available both as a Microsoft Word add-in and as a web app. Improvement suggestions from the review can be applied directly in the Word document, correctly formatted and inserted at the right location.
