AI 101: Guide for medical writers

March 18, 2024
Artificial Intelligence
● Preventing burnout. With high pressure deadlines and limited time to analyze mounds of data, medical writers are under tremendous pressure to produce. The human brain is not made to endure long hours sifting through endless amounts of data, which is why automation can significantly prevent burnout - leading to happier employees and greater productivity.
● Enhancing quality of writing. AI technologies can improve the consistency across documents, different writers and simplify regulatory approval through increased quality and accuracy.
● Improving how the organization operates. AI technologies can help organizations transform, significantly improve how their businesses operate. Alleviating medical writers of time-consuming tasks allows them to focus on other strategic functions.

Break down the AI alphabet soup
While there are many components of AI, it’s important for medical writers to understand terms frequently utilized. Common terms include, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Generation (NLG), Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Large Language Models (LLMs).

Generative AI garnered mainstream attention with tools such as ChatGPT. Generative AI uses LLMs and advanced machine learning to create human-like text by pulling from existing data and experiences to generate new content. LLMs can expand, develop, and specialize AI models. Generative AI technologies can automate parts of the clinical document landscape, allowing medical writers to be more productive and efficient, while helping to pass strict regulatory requirements.

With that, NLP enables computers to understand the complexity of human language as it is spoken and written, using AI, linguistics, and deep machine learning to process and understand real-world input in an efficient manner. NLP has two subsections – NLG and NLU. NLG software turns structured data into written reports, providing explanations and narratives at the speed of thousands of pages per second. NLG can summarize large quantities of data, automating the writing of medical reports.

Select a vendor that understands your goals
Overall, choosing a vendor may sound simple, but it’s critical to ensure the chosen one is aligned with all established goals and objectives. Particularly for medical writers, the right vendor must be specifically suited for highly regulated industries and be able to address critical challenges in security and compliance. In turn, the right vendor will be able to assist medical writers with the high stakes writing and review process accurately and at scale. Think of the vendor as a digital colleague that is a reliable source to help slash writing times and improve consistency of reports.

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