Welcome back to the IBPS Blog! Today, we are going to talk about how technical writing opportunities have proliferated in the drug development market in India, and how India is getting ready to become the preferred hub for medical writing.
It has been almost two decades that, India established itself as a hub of outsourcing destination for Information Technology (IT) industry. The next possible knowledge-based outsourcing areas could be regulatory/medical/scientific writing, with India emerging rapidly as a preferred destination towards evidenced based outcome research.
Technical writing support is gaining its importance because of the increasing demand for bringing new drugs to the market, increased cost and time-bound activities specially associated with the complex product development. Even, some of the large-scale biotech companies are now struggling with limited internal resources. Small and mid-sized companies lack the infrastructure and technical know-how and know-why to build the capabilities in-house. The regulatory and compliance requirements are also becoming more and more stringent.
Technical writing though looks simple but is an art of understanding the science behind the product architecture, interpreting the results and projecting the evidence based science in-lieu with the regulatory and medical writing guidelines. This a science done outside the laboratory which demands ‘proof of details’ rather than ‘proof of concept’. Here’s a review article on the past, present and future of medical writing in India.
India-based medical writing consultancies are catering a wide range of services viz. Dossier writing, technical support for scientific discussions, investigation brochures, product label, briefing books (product-based), clinical study protocols, clinical study reports, informed consent documents, case report forms, scientific papers, manuscripts, product grids, competitor alerts, newsletters, and product strategy documents, etc.
This is because of the availability of large amount of talent and skilled pool, and majority of the people who are equipped with both know-how and know-why in regulatory and product development domain, and majority of the people, are well versed with the English language, which is an USP. The icing on the cake will be cross-cultural awareness and knowing other global languages apart from English, this would widen career prospects and thus, would help make India establish as the preferred hub for global medical writing.
