Reference and Structured Content Tools Essential for Medical Writers
Continuing on our theme of Medical Writing Superpowers (Efficiency, Compliance, Cooperation, Accuracy, Consistency, Presentation, Voice) and the tools to help you achieve them, I wanted to next highlight reference and structured content tools.
Reference Managers (Activate your powers for Efficiency, Accuracy, Presentation)
Providing appropriate credit to the foundational science that we encounter daily is a critical component of our work.
Reference management can be a large part of the MW workload – both in the nonclinical and clinical spaces.
Manual indexing of references is time-consuming and limits the swift re-using of those works.
Software tools are hugely helpful with this as they can house, save, format, and insert citations and bibliographies into your document.
Most tools take some cultivation, but it beats recreating the wheel or struggling with formatting trying to re-use static work.
Look for applications that plug into your writing software (MS Word), can search online databases directly through the software, have flexibility to adjust output styles and presentation, insert bibliographies, and that aren’t too complicated or overengineered for what you need as a user.
Structured Content Management (Activate your powers for Efficiency, Cooperation, Consistency, Presentation, Voice)
One of the best ways to ensure that the right information is finding its way into your document is through the use of structured content.
Creating a catalogue of pre-approved language for key phrases and passages can help reduce edits and speed up reviews.
This concept reduces variation for text that needs to appear an exact way across many documents.
There are technologies that can store these phrases and insert them into your document with keywords or other prompts.
Look for a tool with a smooth interface for developing the phrase library and one that has an intuitive method of inserting the content.
Michael Claffey
Chief Operating Officer