Understanding the Impact of Technology on Medical Writing: AMWA Survey Results from June 2023

Abstract

In July 2023, the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) developed a survey to understand the impact of technology on the role of medical writers in clinical and regulatory document development. The survey was administered using SurveyMonkey to individuals responsible for leading, training, or developing a medical writing team. Respondents were mostly regulatory writers (96%) working in pharmaceutical/biotechnology/medical device or contract research organizations (88%). Most were using technology (65%) and almost all were planning to implement authoring technology (95%). New roles for medical writers, training methods for implementation of artificial intelligence (AI), and validation of the AI output were also discussed. Quality and accuracy of the AI output were the most important considerations of the respondents with transparency and disclosure as the least important. In general, the survey respondents felt that the impact of technology in the medical writing field was an important and timely topic for AMWA to address.