What is the TGA Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code?

The Therapeutic Goods Administration, the TGA, is the Australian regulator for therapeutic goods, which include medicines and medical devices. Advertising of therapeutic goods to the public is governed by the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 and the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code.

The Code sets out what advertising of therapeutic goods may and may not do, with the aim that advertising is accurate, balanced, and supports the safe use of the product. Certain products and claims are restricted, and the rules differ from ordinary consumer advertising. Because the line between an acceptable and an unacceptable claim can be fine, a marketing team typically works closely with regulatory colleagues before a campaign is released.

For a brand in this space, the practical consequence is that promotional material needs a documented review against the Code and the team's own checks before it is published, with a record kept of that review.

Cohiva Campaign helps a therapeutic-goods marketing team run that review as a control. Go-live is rejected at the API until the team's checklist passes, proofing and approvals run together, and a timestamped certificate plus an append-only audit capture how each campaign cleared review. It helps you comply and keeps the record; it does not guarantee regulatory compliance, and it does not provide legal advice.

Because the Code reaches into the specific claims an advertisement makes, proofing matters as much as approval. A reviewer often needs to mark up an exact phrase or an on-pack claim, rather than only signing off on the piece as a whole. Keeping the annotated proof, the approval decisions, and the certificate together gives a regulatory-affairs team a single, ordered record of how a given claim was reviewed, which is far easier to stand behind than a scattered trail of emails and file versions.

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