Standard Responses in Medical Writing

Standard responses (SRs) are frequently used in the medical information industry to reply to questions and requests received from health care providers and other participants within the medical community. SRs provide a quick means of providing accurate, consistent, and company-approved information regardless of which medical information professional handles the request.

Customization and Innovation

At Med Communications, we customize SRs to meet our clients’ needs. We have traditional graphics and methods to develop and deliver SRs, and for those clients who are ready to be a little more innovative, we can blend infographics and interactive SRs to create unique products that attract attention but still offer a high level of quality. Our skilled medical writers develop the content, and our graphic designer adds the extra visual touches that make the content easy to read and navigate for the busy health care professional. Infographics may be used sparingly or liberally, depending on the complexity of the topic and as directed by the client.

Best Practices

Given the variety of formats and development approaches available to SRs in the industry, setting up best practices to follow is an excellent way to ensure adherence to guidelines. The goal is to ensure that the information that is being provided is fair, balanced, accurate, useful, and in accordance with all applicable legal, regulatory, and company guidelines. It is helpful to have consistency in SRs within a company so that writers and reviewers know what information should always be included. Having a consistent format also helps call center personnel find requested information quickly. We offer review and editorial services to help ensure SRs are clear, consistent, and compliant.

Style Guide

To begin streamlining, a style guide would be the most logical place to start. These guides can be very simple with little detail and short or complex, exceptionally detailed, and lengthy. For larger companies with many writers, a detailed guide is helpful for ensuring consistency within and across multiple brands. For smaller companies with one or two writers, a basic guide may suffice. Style guides can encompass such items as general formatting of letters, referencing styles, types of clinical data to include, and general grammatical guidelines. If you need help creating a style guide, or would like help updating and streamlining your existing guide, our editorial professionals are glad to assist.

Experience

Med Communications has extensive experience with the development, maintenance, and updating of standard responses. Our medical writers and reviewers have a firm understanding of regulatory requirements, medical literature search strategies and evaluation, as well as the mechanics of developing high-quality documents and presentation of data. Our team possesses clinical expertise in therapeutic areas such as oncology, rare diseases, hematology, endocrinology, cardiology, infectious diseases, pediatrics, and more. Our writers know how to best present the information so that it meets the needs of both the medical information contact center and the health care provider who will ultimately be using the information. Our combination of clinical experience and industry knowledge allows us to meet the needs of our clients in an efficient manner with on-time, well-written first drafts that require minimal editing.