Role of a Medical Writer in Advisory Board Meetings

Medical writing is a multidimensional profession which requires creating numerous scientific/non-scientific documents for various phases of a drug life-cycle. Different types of documents prepared by a medical writer are later utilized by the pharmaceutical companies in procuring approval from the regulatory bodies and for knowledge sharing with the healthcare stakeholders. These documents may include (but are not limited to) documents for pre-clinical studies, clinical trials, and post-marketing studies,reports of advisory board meetings, patient educational material, and promotional material. Among all the above-mentioned documents, writing reports for advisory board meetings is an integral part of the medical writing profession.

What is an Advisory Board?

Advisory boards are considered as an important tool for understanding the unmet medical or healthcare needs of a drug/product. By forming an ‘advisory board’, the pharmaceutical companies or medical societies aim to engage their key opinion leaders (KOLs)in order to get better insights on the various medical benefits/limitations of their products from the medical fraternity. Productive discussions held during the advisory board meetings are used to gather visions on possible research opportunities, including guidance on the clinical development and trial protocols, as well as unmet health care needs of current clinical practices that might drive future clinical strategies. The organizing body usually involves a medical writer during an advisory board meeting for capturingevery detail of the discussion held at the medical advisory board meeting and later drafting an objective-driven report which is shared at different knowledge sharing platforms.

What is the Role of a Medical Writer?

The responsibility and role of a medical writer vary according to the objective of the advisory board and according to the type of report required by the organizing body. This may include:engaging KOLs for an advisory board, preparing questionnaires, conducting online surveys (for understanding unmet needs), preparing a pre-meeting report to be shared with KOLs, preparing presentations for the advisory board meeting, hosting an advisory board, capturing minutes of meeting, preparing draft for meeting report, and modifying the report into a publication-ready literature. Hence, it is very important that a medical writer has a prior understanding of the objective of the meeting and nature of deliverable.

Turacoz Healthcare Solutions provides end-to-end support for conducting an advisory board and preparing high-quality scientific reports of the meeting. We have successfully conducted several national and global advisory boards related to preclinical research and product positioning in the past two years and look forward to partnerships in future. Turacoz has experienced medical writers who understand the requirements of our clients and efficiently capture the body and soul of an advisory board meeting.