Medicines information for patients: Insights into research and practice for medical writers - Volume 21, Issue

Many people do not take their medicines as prescribed, and medicines can cause harm if not used appropriately. In addition, in most health systems there is increasing discussion about involving patients in decisions about their health – including…

EUPATI: Patient engagement through education as an important contributor to shared decision making - Volume 30, Issue

Building knowledge and capacity for patients and their advocates about the “systems” of healthcare is empowering for patients. The European Patients’ Academy (EUPATI) was established across Europe in 2012 to provide education and training to…

Establishing a patient publication steering committee: A case study with insights for medical writers - Volume 29, Issue

Development of a patient publication steering committee (PPSC) is an innovation in industry publication practices. In this brief article, we summarise how UCB Pharma, a global biopharmaceutical company, plans to partner with patients to establish a…

Gained in Translation - Volume 24, Issue

Editorial Welcome to the Translation Section editorial! What we call ‘lay-friendliness’ is a key characteristic of Patient Information Sheets (PIS), which are tightly regulated on a European level to guarantee a comprehensible document that…

Digital Communication - Volume 33, Issue

Section Editor: Nicole Bezuidenhout Purr-fecting translation: Unleashing the power of computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools Author: Natasha Grande de França Medical translations are fundamental, and precision is at the core of this work. Any…

HIV research fraudster handed stiff prison sentence - Volume 24, Issue

In the December 2014 issue of Medical Writing, I reported that disgraced Iowa State University researcher Dong-Pyou Han was facing fraud charges for faking experiments on a new HIV vaccine.1 In spite of a guilty plea, on 1 July 2015 Dr Han was…

What can twitter do for me? - Volume 22, Issue

Like everything, the usefulness of twitter depends on what the user does with it. Here is an assortment of information that can be obtained if you selectively follow organisations with twitter accounts relevant to your interests or…

President's Message - Volume 24, Issue

Dear EMWA Members, When we surged en masse onto the dance floor at the Dublin Conference Spring Dinner, supercool ceilidh band ‘Perfect Friction’ were astonished, wondering ‘…what are these medical writers all about?’ We certainly breathed life…

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…

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors SCOPE Medical Writing, the official journal of EMWA (the European Medical Writers Association), is a quarterly journal that aims to educate, inform, and entertain medical writers. Medical Writing publishes themed issues…