Medical Writing - Types of Medical Writing

Types of Medical Writing

Medical writing for the pharmaceutical industry can be classified as either regulatory medical writing or educational medical writing.

Regulatory medical writing means creating the documentation that regulatory agencies require in the approval process for drugs, devices and biologics. Regulatory documents can be huge and are formulaic. They include clinical study protocols, clinical study reports, patient informed consent forms, investigator brochures and summary documents (e.g. in Common Technical Document format) that summarize and discuss the data a company gathers in the course of developing a medical product.

Educational medical writing means writing documents about drugs, devices and biologics for general audiences, and for specific audiences such as health care professionals. These include sales literature for newly launched drugs, data presentations for medical conferences, medical journal articles for nurses, physicians and pharmacists, and programs and enduring materials for continuing education (CE) or continuing medical education (CME).

Other types of medical writing include journalism and marketing, both of which can have a medical writing focus.

Regardless of the type of medical writing, companies either assign it to an in-house writer, or "outsource" it to a contract medical writer or medical writing service.