Writing for patients: When and how? - Volume 29, Issue

The move towards patient engagement and patient involvement in healthcare decisions (“shared care”) has triggered a raft of new guidances from regulatory authorities, accompanied by new regulations mandating that pharmaceutical companies engage with…

Promoting equity in understanding: A cross-organisational plain language glossary for clinical research - Volume 29, Issue

Clear communication with the public and with potential clinical trial participants and their caregivers is foundational to the ethical tenets of respect, justice, and beneficence. However, health literacy, even of highly educated individuals, often…

What do writers need to know about user testing? - Volume 24, Issue

Increasing amounts of information are being made available to patients – but how do we know if we are getting it right and meeting people's needs? In this article, we describe how we have employed user testing to test and improve not just…

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…

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…

Medical Communications - Volume 24, Issue

Dear all, A very warm welcome to the first issue of Medical Writing in 2015! This whole issue is dedicated to a subject very close to my heart (as I'm sure you're all well aware of by now) – plain language. Naturally, everyone benefits from text…

Medical Communications - Volume 22, Issue

Having left the office for 5 days to go to the EMWA Spring Conference, I returned to the obligatory email avalanche. While it was mostly junk (and unfortunately still no ‘congratulations on winning the lottery’ message…), there were some messages…

Message from the President - Volume 22, Issue

Dear Medical Writers It is time for me to give you another brief update on the activities of the EMWA Executive Committee (EC) and our plans for 2013, as well as a short preview on the spring conference in Manchester. The autumn conference…

Regulatory writing basics - Volume 23, Issue

The role of a regulatory writer is to produce regulatory documents (usually taken to refer to documents that are submitted in some form to the health authorities). These documents should adhere to the relevant guidance and be fit for purpose, meani…

EMWA social media team - Volume 23, Issue