Medical writing is a critical function in any healthcare
communications company, providing a challenge to the writer to produce diverse
types of output to educate and/or inform a range of audience groups about drugs
and diseases. The resulting material may be targeted at any of the following
groups:- scientific audiences, pharmaceutical company employees, health care
practitioners and/or patients. The medical writer needs to be able to
understand both the needs and level of scientific comprehension of each target
audience, then utilize his/her own skills to write succinctly and to
communicate accurately with them.
A medical writer’s output can include slide sets, posters, brochures, newsletters, conference reports and scientific papers. Most of these outputs are increasingly transitioning to new platforms, away from traditional printed formats. The challenge for the medical writer is to marry the requirements of the brief from the client to the needs of the target audience(s) while producing clear and accurate communications. In addition to ensuring scientific and medical accuracy, there is also a need for the writer to ensure that all materials comply with guidelines that have been established by bodies such as the ABPI (Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry).
Purple’s goal of building up its healthcare team and
broadening the team’s capabilities highlighted the need to develop the internal
scientific writing resource rather than relying on a pool of freelance medical
writers. In addition to enhancing the team’s flexibility in meeting the diverse
requirements of its clients, this provides Purple’s healthcare team with
greater scientific credibility when dealing. The establishment of a “scientific
hub” within Purple, whose capabilities encompass copy writing, medical editing
and medical writing, provides a strong team to meet the diverse healthcare
communication needs of its clients. Moreover, the availability of a dedicated
writing resource within Purple facilitates the Commercial Teams’ ability to deliver
higher value business from the companies that they deal with. Their success
then provides the writing team with more creative opportunities in addition to
enhancing Purple’s revenues.
I joined Purple as a Senior Medical Writer to provide the
healthcare team with both writing experience and pharmaceutical industry
insights. These have been developed through many years of experience of the
pharmaceutical industry, originally in research and then as a freelance writer.
My writing career has spanned all therapeutic areas and involved producing
material for audiences ranging from scientists to financial analysts. The
attraction of Purple was the ability to produce material for use across a range
of platforms, exploiting opportunities to produce interactive material in
addition to more conventional formats reflecting how medical communications is
increasingly transitioning to exploit new modes of delivering critical
messages.
For more information as to how The Purple agency can help you with medical writing and multi-platform communication contact us at sayhello@purple.agency
Peter Norman
Peter joined Purple earlier this year as a Senior Medical Writer working across an impressive number of pharmaceutical clients and their respective therapy areas. Peter works alongside a team of copywriters, medical writers, editors and proofreaders here at Purple writing clear and engaging content helping to deliver engaging experiences for our clients and their customers.