Job profile of a  Medical writer

Medical writing involves writing scientific/research documents which include drug regulatory documents, educational or promotional literature, manuscripts for scientific journals and content for healthcare websites, magazines or news articles, social feeds. It is of primary importance that the data presented in these articles meets the required guidelines as well as is comprehensible to the target audience be physicians, patients or the masses in general.

The documents need to be clear, concise and free of grammatical errors .Apart from the writing skills the individual should be proficient in reviewing, editing and most importantly working in accordance with varied publishing guidelines. A medical writer should be up-to-date with the changing guidelines as well as the scientific data available in the market as there is lots of new information being processed in the industry practically every hour and it is very important that medical writers can amalgamate all the required information available and make it concise and suitable for the target audience. Thus, it has to be as a medical writer you need to be on your toes as the medical field is very dynamic. Due to the surge in the researches being conducted in the various fields and quantity of data available in the market there is a high demand for medical writers to search quality out of the quantity of data available as well as be sure of the authenticity of the material as it has to be kept in mind that medical data is a sensitive topic and can have negative repercussions if not properly researched in terms of authenticity and reliability.
We now have institutes providing the training in the science and art of medical writing. The demand for medical writing is on a steady rise in pharmaceutical and healthcare industry as the information regarding new ailments, new or modified treatments modalities need to be made aware firstly to the medical practitioners and then in more layman and simplified ways to the general public. Aptly called “promotional material writing” or “Medico-marketing writing”.

How to make a career in Medical Writing?

James Lind Institute (JLI) provides intensive, online and focused training programs for professionals who would like to develop a career in medical writing. Pharmaceutical companies, Publication houses, news portals, clinical research companies (CRO, BPOs), etc., are looking for professionals with scientific writing expertise to develop, draft and format medical documents as per regulatory and industry needs.