Did you know that a career in medical communications can take different paths?
You may be interested in becoming a medical or life science writer or editor, but you are not quite sure where you’d like to work and what type of documents you want to focus on. Today we describe some of the common careers in medical communications below.
Not sure which paths are a match with your educational and professional background? Our medical communications specialties decision matrix will help you determine which field of medical communications likely best suits your education, experience, and expertise.
Scientific publications
These professionals work with investigators to publish their research findings in the form of peer-reviewed manuscripts, conference abstracts, posters, oral presentations, and sometimes news articles.
Health writing, public relations, and marketing
Health and science professionals write and edit feature and journalistic articles, news releases, patient education materials, website content, and bulletin boards. Public relations and marketing professionals write patient, physician, and research stories. They may also coordinate media outreach programs as part of health care and academic institutions.
Grant writing
Grant writers write and edit grant proposals to obtain research funding. They may also be involved in the administrative aspects of these proposals and submission to various agencies and foundations.
Regulatory writing
These professionals write and edit documents required by regulatory agencies (eg, FDA) to approve drugs, biologic agents, and medical devices.
Continuing Medical Education (CME)
CME writers develop slides decks, review articles, needs assessments, and outcomes analyses aimed at educating clinicians and other health care professionals.
Other areas
Biomedical communicators can also work in sales training, medical liaising (connection between health care companies and physicians), promotional writing (advertising materials for diagnostic and therapeutic products), publishing, educational writing (content for textbooks and online learning platforms), or for scientific journals (editing, copy editing, author outreach).
You can enter these different areas as a freelance or in-house professional. Want to learn more? Check out our learning opportunities!
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