President’s Message - Volume 25, Issue

Dear EMWA Members, It is my very great pleasure to ‘speak’ to you from the pages of the very first issue of Medical Writing of 2016, with our new printer, Hastings. I am particularly excited that our feature articles are now open-access – a…

EMWA news - Volume 21, Issue

News from the EMWA Website Manager   New role At the recent EMWA conference held in Cyprus, I assumed the position of EMWA Website Manager. While this is a daunting task, it is a challenge I am pleased to take on. To ensure that I was in a…

Good pharma - Volume 22, Issue

Drugs companies publish only a fraction of their results and keep much of the information to themselves. Drug companies are ‘debasing’ drug trials whose publication in journals can apparently confer scientific approval. Merck had fought for years to …

In the Bookstores - Volume 22, Issue

The Spirit Level

Ever had a ‘ping’ moment? This book might have been mine. I'm not a natural pessimist, but Western society today seems less cohesive and people more materialistic, stressed, unhealthy, and unhappy than in times gone by. Wealth and s…

Selling evidence over the counter: Do community pharmacists engage with evidence-based medicine? - Volume 22, Issue

Community pharmacy has been recently criticised for selling products which do not have a rational or robust evidence base. Available evidence suggests that pharmacists understand and are willing to embrace the concepts of evidence-based medicine…

The EMWA Budapest Working Group: A 2-year collaboration to make recommendations for aligning the ICH E3 guideline with current practice and developing clinical study protocol guidance - Volume 23, Issue

International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) E6 and ICH E3, developed nearly 20 years ago, are the current regulatory guidance documents for developing clinical study protocols (CSPs) and clinical study reports (CSRs). Ambiguity in the…

Cost comparison of salaried and freelance medical writers working in Europe - Volume 23, Issue

This is the first systematic comparison of the costs of salaried and freelance medical writers working in Europe. In the absence of official figures for the total costs of employment, we make reasoned assumptions, using mean base figures for…

Package leaflets for medication in the EU: The possibility of integrating patients’ perspectives in a regulated genre? - Volume 24, Issue

Package leaflets (PLs) have been legally required to accompany medicines in the EU since 1999. Despite the best intentions and efforts, however, they are generally not well-received by the public for whom they are intended. This paper picks up on…

Medical decision making at the individual and population level: The increasing role of evidence - Volume 30, Issue

The major change in medical decision making over the last 50 years has been the realisation that treatment decisions would be improved if doctors’ existing knowledge was supplemented by evidence generated systematically through health services…

A stroll through the medical blogosphere - Volume 24, Issue

Medical blogs are a very popular way of communicating health-related information. They can be written by medical professionals or laypeople, and topics include diseases, procedures, health policies, and personal topics such as everyday experiences.…