AI Without the Hype: Everyday Tools Medical Writers Already Use (and Should Use More)
In medical writing, artificial intelligence (AI) is often tangled in the controversy surrounding generative tools like ChatGPT. But AI isn’t new, and it isn’t always generative. In fact, many medical writers have been using AI-powered tools for years without realizing it.
If you’re resistant to AI because you associate it with generating content, you may be surprised to hear that most AI tools are designed to help you write better, faster, and more accurately – not to write for you. Read on to learn more about some of the most useful and often overlooked AI-powered tools that support medical writing without crossing the line into generative content.
Why Use AI Tools in Medical Writing?
The pressure to maintain high standards while managing tight timelines is a significant challenge in medical writing. AI-powered tools can provide support by:
Improving grammar, clarity, and tone
Increasing the efficiency of reference management
Ensuring publication integrity with plagiarism checks
Importantly, many of these tools integrate seamlessly with Word and reference managers without generating content. They serve as digital assistants, not ghostwriters.
What to Consider When Choosing an AI Tool
When selecting an AI tool, be sure to think about what you need and how AI could help. Below are some features of common AI tools:
Terminology support: Does it understand scientific or medical terms?
Style adaptability: Can it follow AMA or journal-specific guidelines?
Integration: Is it compatible with Word or other word processing software?
Collaboration: Can you share feedback or libraries with teammates?
Security: Does the tool store content in the cloud, or is it local?
Cost and licensing: Is the tool free, or does it require a one-time or monthly fee?
Scope: Is it single-purpose (e.g., just grammar) or multipurpose?
Updates: How frequently is the tool updated, and does it offer robust technical support?
Grammar and Clarity Tools
The following tools help polish drafts, correct errors, and identify readability issues.
Grammarly offers real-time grammar and rephrasing suggestions, scientific tone adjustments, and plagiarism checks. The premium plan unlocks advanced features, including full sentence rewrites and plagiarism detection and writing tone adjustments. However, some may find it limited for technical content.
Ginger focuses on grammar and clarity and can help with rephrasing. Released in 2007, Ginger is one of the original AI writing tools. It’s a simple tool but lacks plagiarism detection and integration with Open Office and Google Docs.
Microsoft Editor is built into Office 365. Editor is useful in Word and Outlook, though less robust than standalone tools.
Reference Managers with Smart Features
Reference management has always been a cornerstone of medical writing, and it’s becoming more intelligent with AI tools.
EndNote offers AI-assisted reference suggestions and seamless “Cite While You Write” functionality. EndNote is the powerhouse of reference managers with excellent citation style compliance and large library management tools, but can be pricey. EndNote also allows unlimited cloud storage and library sharing with up to 100 users.
Mendeley enables team sharing and PDF annotations. it’s free and open-source, but desktop version updates can lag and often require manually refreshing to see the referencing changes. Mendeley can suggest new articles based on your library or recent reading habits, which can be especially useful for literature reviews or background research.
Zotero has a browser plug-in for quick saves and highly customizable styles. It’s open-source with paid storage upgrades and loads of external plug-ins available. Zotero will even allow you to highlight key points in published papers and create organized notes for you.
Other tools worth exploring: RefWorks, BibDesk, Paperpile, and Papers.
Plagiarism Detection
Maintaining originality and avoiding accidental duplication is essential. While traditional plagiarism detectors rely on exact text string matches, AI-driven tools can detect subtle sentence restructuring, synonym swapping, and paraphrasing that is too similar to the original text.
iThenticate is the gold standard for publication integrity and is used by journals and publishers. iThenticate searches webpages, Crossref and other publishers, and institutional repositories, similar to Turnitin used by academic institutions screening for academic integrity. Users pay by the page, so the tool is, therefore, best for institutions who are comfortable paying for unlimited plagiarism checks.
Copyscape is great for checking web content or comparing internal drafts. It uses a prepaid credit system to perform plagiarism checks on individual documents. Credits are used based on the word count of your document.
Grammarly Premium includes plagiarism checks against the ProQuest academic database and websites, but requires a premium subscription plan. Grammarly Premium produces a report that highlights plagiarized text and, importantly, provides the source of the text.
Readability Tools
These tools are especially helpful for writing plain language summaries and patient-facing materials.
Microsoft Editor’s Accessibility Checker highlights readability issues and potential barriers to understanding, including missing headers or other formatting elements that help a reader, and ambiguous hyperlinks that are unlikely to enhance text.
Hemingway Editor uses color-coded markers to flag complex sentences.
Flesch-Kincaid Calculators are built into Word and are available online. This tool provides a Flesch Readability Ease score and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score, particularly useful for plain language summaries.
Readable.com offers keyword density and tone analysis. The tool also provides a basic readability score and spelling and grammar check.
If you’re already using Microsoft Editor or EndNote, congratulations! You’re already using AI. Now is a great time to explore what these and other tools can do.
If you’re looking for an AI tool that can do it all, check out Acumen’s Stylus tool. The Stylus seamlessly integrates with Word to format your document and manage your citations and includes a dictionary of over 25,000 medical and scientific terms not found in the native MS Word dictionary.