How to write for health websites - Volume 30, Issue

Medical writing for the internet is unique because of the way people find and consume online content. Unlike with a medical brochure handed to someone by their doctor or a hard copy of the latest health book that they’ve purchased, individuals are…

Home office: Yay or nay? - Volume 31, Issue

In the first quarter of 2022, Bioforum performed an anonymous internal survey among its medical writers to understand if our employees would like to return to a physical office or prefer to stay in the home office despite the lifting of most of the…

How can we maximise patient engagement with Plain Language Summary of Publication articles (PLSPs)? A publisher’s perspective - Volume 33, Issue

Plain Language Summary of Publication articles (PLSPs) are aimed at non-specialist audiences, using non-technical/jargon-free and easy to understand language to provide summaries of publications. The introduction of PLSPs has added to the growing…

Translating “medicalese”: The case of informed consent forms - Volume 33, Issue

Informed consent forms (ICFs) are documents used in clinical research to inform prospective participants about – and obtain their consent for – partaking in a clinical trial. Evidence suggests that ICFs may not be fit for purpose because their…

President’s Message - Volume 33, Issue

Navigating the new era of clinical trial transparency This issue of Medical Writing comes at a time when the summer holidays are behind us. Here’s hoping it has been a relaxing and rejuvenating time for all. As we get back to our day-to-day work,…

Out On Our Own - Volume 24, Issue

Editorial In this issue, Satyendra Shenoy, a member of a few years from Mumbai tells us about the tribulations – if not trials – of realising his lifelong ambition to settle in Germany. What eventually made this possible was discovering, as a…

Out On Our Own - Volume 23, Issue

An introduction to vaccines and immunotherapies - Volume 27, Issue

Vaccines and immunotherapies are among the largest categories for pharmaceutical products, meaning that many medical writers will work in this field. For people new to this area, we describe the basics of how vaccines and immunotherapies work.

Never say never! Returning to full-time employment after freelancing - Volume 25, Issue

Alison McIntosh successfully operated as a freelance medical writer for 14 years and gave up the ‘flexible lifestyle’ of a selfemployed freelance medical writer to become a full time employee. She has joined a growing band of ‘decentralised’ office…

Troublesome words - Volume 26, Issue

Medical writing tends to contain longer, less common, words than English fiction, and they are here termed troublesome words. Troublesome words are an indicator of poor style, and often point to grammatical errors. An easy way to start improving…