Connecting through screens: Navigating relationships with patients and advocacy groups in a digital world - Volume 33, Issue

As a Healthcare Publications Editor at Karger Publishers, I write, edit, and oversee the development of patient information resources in our Fast Facts for Patients series. Soft skills are vital in my role at Karger, where we are committed to…

Medical Communications and Writing for Patients - Volume 33, Issue

Section Editor: Lisa Chamberlain James

Involving patients in company-sponsored medical publications: Learning from collaboration with a patient advocacy group to engage patient authors

Authors: Aki Yoshikawa, Atsuko Iwata, Miho Hatano, Yuko Koji…

Penning hope: The impact of medical writing for rare conditions - Volume 34, Issue

In this article, I explain my route into the world of rare conditions, my experience of working as a clinician, and my passion for raising awareness to all involved. I achieve this by providing education to healthcare professionals, patients, and…

Pleasing the reader by pleasing the eye—Part 1 The role of format and design in readability - Volume 21, Issue

Whoever writes wants to be read. Yet, even if we succeed in creating an informative, logically structured, and adequately worded text tailored to our target audience, i.e., text we consider to have an adequate level of readability, our documents may…

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…

Sustainable development, climate emergency, and journalism: The emerging role of medical writers - Volume 30, Issue

The Sustainable Development Goals, set up by the UN in 2015, provide a framework for the policy makers in government and other advocates to work towards planetary health in a more holistic way. For the general public, these goals might not always be…

Lay titles for clinical trials: Is industry achieving the balance? - Volume 32, Issue

Titles of clinical trials may directly influence whether patients, caretakers, or healthcare professionals will want to obtain more information about the trial. Major clinical trial registries require lay titles (referred to as “brief” or “public”…

HIV vaccine clinical trials: An overview - Volume 27, Issue

More than 30 years after the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus as the agent that causes AIDS, an effective vaccine against this deadly disease has yet to be developed. The pathway to the development of a vaccine has been riddled with…

Harmonising linguistic validation with AI: Precision, efficiency, and the human touch in patient-reported outcome translation - Volume 33, Issue

The surge in artificial intelligence (AI) prompts a reassessment of linguistic validation methods for patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures. The robust linguistic process, designed to adapt PRO measures for different cultures and languages, is…

Writing for lay audiences - Volume 24, Issue

For most of us, medical writing is highly technical. We prepare regulatory or clinical documents or write materials targeted to medical doctors. Medical writing for lay audiences is different, and it does not come naturally to most of us because…