The key to success in Medical Writing

“The physician who launches into the arena a literary venture poorly clad, unsound in its constitution…bruised by bad grammar…may expect to have his progeny returned with the simple but trite statement ‘The editor regrets…’.” M. Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, in Medical Writing: The technic and the art, 1948.

Medical (or Scientific) writing is the art of presenting technical and complex information in a logically structured, simple, clear, impartial and accurate way. While the above quote by M. Fishbein focused on publication writing, it is applicable to all fields of Medical Writing.

Like writing a novel or a scenario, the key to success in medical writing is to deliver a message to the targeted audience in an easily comprehensible manner.

This goal will only be reached by

• focusing on the audience’s needs,
• adapting the vocabulary,
• structuring the information,
• creating an engaging take-home message and, as a result,
• guiding the reader’s attention to what really matters.

"A reader or listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available. To recognize and interpret the symbols presented to him requires part of this power: to arrange and combine the images suggested requires a further part; and only that part which remains can be used for the realization of the thought conveyed”. H Spencer, English philosopher and sociologist, in The Economy of Styles, 1852.

How can we help?

Our team of more than 20 scientists has a broad medical and scientific expertise. As a result, we can cover a wide range of scientific areas, from fundamental science to clinical, pharmacovigilance or epidemiology trials, and a wide range of documents, from clinical and regulatory documents to journal articles, congress posters or presentations.

We have been extensively trained to develop Clinical and Regulatory documents. The list of documents that we commonly process, includes but is not limited to study protocols, clinical and epidemiological study reports, investigator’s brochures, informed consent forms, clinical summaries, clinical overviews, medical need programs (MNPs), reimbursement dossiers and surveys.

We prepare all the documents in close collaboration with our clients by setting up kick-off meetings, consolidation meetings and peer-reviews (by the client), to ensure that the intended information is completely presented, fulfills the client’s expectations, and is delivered in a timely manner. We maintain and guarantee the quality standards by subjecting all the final documents to an in-depth quality control, using specific checklists developed in-house for each type of document.