EMWA News Update from 2023

Dear Members,
The virtual 56^th EMWA conference took place from 9^th-24^th November and we have some interesting numbers to share with you:

Total number of delegates: 459
Delegates attending for the first time: 174
Conference activities: 112 hours
EPDP workshops: 28
Regional hubs: 7 (Benelux, France, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Serbia, and Switzerland)

In addition, there was a lecture during the opening session and 3 educational seminars. A summary of the seminars and the recordings will be available to EMWA members soon.
From the feedback we had so far, we can say that the conference was a success. We wish to thank the workshop leaders, seminar presenters, and of course all the attendees that made this possible.

Now, for the updates from the various groups within EMWA. Happy reading!

CORE Reference

Check out the October 2023 list of ICH, EMA (including CTR and CTIS), FDA and other regional guidances; best practice documents; and other tools and resources supporting clinical trial reporting; transparency and disclosure of clinical documents; real world data and artificial intelligence/machine learning in the regulation of medicines. The CORE Reference NewsSummary encompasses medicines, vaccines and devices; information is archived (including the November 2023 NewsSummary in the coming days) at: https://www.core-reference.org/news-summaries/. Sign up for the bi-monthly email service here: https://www.core-reference.org/subscribe.

Also, a reminder that the CORE Reference Team conducted the 2023 Utility Survey which closed on 05 December 2023. The results of this survey which will help support professional development for regulatory medical writers will be published in September 2024 as part of the transparency and disclosure issue of the EMWA journal, Medical Writing (MEW). Further information and the link to the survey are here.

EMWA Sponsorship Officers
As you may know, all roles within EMWA are voluntary. We take great pride in being an association run by members for members. Nonetheless, there are roles that are appointed and others that are open to members’ vote, depending on the nature of the role.

Last month, the sponsorship officers’ official term came to an end after a 2-year cycle and their performance was reviewed by EMWA’s Executive Committee. Based on a positive review, the Executive Committee decided to ask the current sponsorship officers, Ricardo Milho and Abe Shevack, if they would like to keep their role. We are happy to announce that both decided to remain as sponsorship officers for another 2 years, and we wish them many fruitful connections. They are already engaging with potential sponsors for the upcoming EMWA conference in Valencia, so if you have any lead, please contact them at sponsorship@emwa.org.

Upcoming EMWA Elections
There are 2 positions in the Executive Committee that will open soon: President-Elect and Conference Director. If you would like to apply for any of the roles, you’ll have to send a candidate statement and a photo to EMWA’s head Office, as instructed in a recent email sent to all members. Please keep in mind that to be eligible, candidates must be paid-up EMWA members and must have attended at least 1 spring conference in the previous 3 years. Accepted applications will then be sent out to the entire membership for voting in February 2024.

Freelance Business Forum
The Freelance Business Group’s 2023 Autumn Virtual Forum had over 110 registered participants and was run by Johanna Chester. This year the virtual conference included rooms with assigned discussion themes, run by expert freelancers from various backgrounds.

The sessions reported the importance of creating a personal brand among colleagues and potential clients and its useful for business growth (in terms of professionality, knowledge and financial aspects). The social side of networking was emphasized, especially for medical writers working alone. The fantastic flow of information about updated regulations and the myriad of workshops provided by the EMWA network, can help with understanding what freelancers in various sectors of medical writing need to know. The dedicated LinkedIn freelancing group is a great platform where we can share any information about useful content for our colleagues and create and maintain relationships. Professional growth also needs reflection, about what goes well and what doesn’t. Frequent and fast personal reviews can help us keep track of critical moments and prepare us for a more elaborate annual review where we can assess professional and emotional aspects and goals of the past year and the year to come. And if review goals include taking the next step to entrepreneurship, recommendations include having business processes set before diving in head-first.

A heart felt thank you goes out to all the volunteers who generously dedicated their time and shared their wisdom including Arianna Ferrini, Lucia Massi, Beate Walter, Satyen Shenoy, Namrata Singh and Johanna Chester. We’re looking forward to creating contemporary discussions for the face-to-face forum during the 2024 Spring EMWA Conference in Valencia. If you have any suggestions or topics you would like to promote, please let us know via the dedicated LinkedIn group EMWA Freelance Business Forum – online.

EMWA Professional Development Committee Webinar
An EPDC webinar took place on Wednesday, 13th December 2023 at 16:00 CET delving into the most discussed topic in medical writing: AI tools that support the medical writing workflow. Katja Martin from Medtextpert guided this session, beginning with an overview of large language models to lay the foundation and then offered valuable tips on prompt engineering. We then explored a selection of AI tools designed for scientists, researchers, and medical writers. The aim is to inspire you to delve into these tools, moving beyond their limitations and embracing their potential. We suggest reviewing the latest EMWA journal issue on AI and machine learning in conjunction with the webinar.

ACCORD EMWA Seminar
We are very pleased to announce that the ‘Using the ACCORD guideline to report consensus research: what medical writers need to know’ online event took place on Thursday 14 December, 13.00-14.30 CET.

Consensus methods are widely used in healthcare when there is uncertainty about the best course of action, such as when evidence is emergent, inconsistent, limited, or absent. Unfortunately, poor reporting of consensus methods is common, and can make interpreting consensus recommendations challenging. ACCORD is the first reporting guideline for consensus methods and aims to improve the transparency and completeness of reporting in this area, which may enhance trust and confidence in the recommendations made by panels. This session will provide an overview of the most common consensus methods, explain the development and structure of the ACCORD checklist, and provide examples of good reporting of key items from the checklist.

Regulatory Special Interest Group News
The Regulatory Special Interest Group (SIG) is replacing the existing Regulatory Public Disclosure SIG, with a broader scope. It deals with regulatory writing, mostly within drug development. The second SIG meeting took place on December 15^th at 13:00 CET. A LinkedIn group has been set up to promote networking and sharing among EMWA members interested in regulatory writing. If you are interested in joining the LinkedIn group, please go there and send a request. We will share relevant information relative to the SIG in this group.

Veterinary Special Interest Group News
The vetSIG’s final Meet & Share of 2023 (Jan 8th @2.30 pm CET) will cover the topic of AI. We will have a report back from the autumn conference, an interactive section to see what ChatGPT can do for a rabies text, and members will share their own questions and experiences related to AI. Please e-mail vets@emwa.org for a Zoom invitation and/or further details.

Communicating with the Public Special Interest Group News
On Wednesday 17 January 2024 at 2.00PM UK Time. the CwP SIG are hosting Part 2 of their Meet & Share session titled “Protecting the public from undue harm during research studies.” Following their discussion on the role of the Ethics Committee last September, Alison Rapley and Art Gertel will discuss the need to use language understandable by the lay person to prepare the Ethics Committee Application and participant-facing documents such as the Patient Information Sheet and Informed Consent Form as well as recruitment material and diaries. Alison will also discuss the UK Health Research Authority’s “Information and Consent – Design and Review Principles” which became mandatory on 1st December 2023. Art will also discuss various Glossaries, including the MRCT Plain Language initiative. To register, please contact Head office info@emwa.org

Ambassador Programme News
The EMWA Ambassador Programme is continuing its efforts to reach out to new audiences to promote medical writing and EMWA and has supported the following events:

On 16 Oct 2023, Sarah Choudhury and Arunon Sivananthan represented EMWA at the Kings College Career and Employability Event in London held at the Francis Crick Institute, London, UK.

On 15 November 2023, Raquel Billiones, MEW editor-in-chief was invited to give a talk at the West Visayas State University (Philippines) with the title “Bridging Medicine and Communications: How Science and Healthcare Professionals Fill the Gaps through Medical Writing.” The talk was given within the frame of the 2nd Research Café spearheaded by the university’s College of Medicine.

On 24 Nov 2023 Nicole Bezuidenhout, Francesca Cappellini, and Catherine Heddle represented EMWA at the very well attended Aula Medica Chase Career Conference in Stokholm, Sweden.

On 30 Jan 2024, Katrin Zaragoza Dörr, and Marta Mas will give a presentation on “Career in Medical Writing – Bridges to Industry at the Institut de Recerca Biomèdica/Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) Barcelona, a biomedical research centre.

For more details about these events and photos, please check the EMWA Ambassador Programme webpage.

If you are an experienced medical writer and EMWA volunteer and are interested in becoming an EMWA Ambassador, or if you know of any upcoming career events in your locality, please contact Abe Shevack.

Did You Know…?
EMWA plans it conferences in advance, so that we can find hotels with enough capacity for the attendees we expect but also with enough rooms to hold all the workshops and sessions that occur in parallel. You may already know that the next Spring conference will happen in Valencia, Spain, but do you know where the next ones are?

May 2025 – Riga
May 2026 – The Hague
May 2027 – Prague

As for the Autumn conferences, they will continue in the virtual format, to promote a wider reach among those who are unable or unwilling to travel, although the existence of local hubs can still create an in-person experience for those who prefer it.

Tips and Tricks
This month, we have and Excel tip sent by our lovely Webmanager, Allison Kirsop. To start a new line of text in a worksheet cell, or add spacing between lines or paragraphs in a cell, press Alt+Enter to insert a line break, or Option+Enter (Mac). This is what it looks like, step-by-step:

Double-click the cell where you want to insert your line break.
Place your cursor where you want to break the line.
Press Alt+Enter or Option+Enter (Mac) to insert the line break. You might have to delete one space back if you have misjudged your cursor placement.

If this is the first time you’re seeing the “Tips and Tricks” section, here’s the context: this section is intended to be a space for EMWA members to share pieces of useful information that might ease the life of fellow medical writers. This way, EMWA is fostering a sense of community among its members and promote dialog. In return, we’ll highlight your LinkedIn or EMWA Freelance Directory profile (or your website) with a link for it, if you wish so.

You can email your contributions to the Public Relations Officer by the 22^nd of each month to be featured in the following month newsletter. Provide the text (maximum 200 words) and a link to your profile or website. Please note that the featured tips and tricks will have to be relevant to fellow medical writers, and repeat suggestions may not be featured.

Seasonal Wishes
Since 2023 is coming to an end, we wish to express our gratitude to all EMWA members for supporting us and helping to advance the medical writing profession. We hope that you have a joyous holiday season and that 2024 brings you peace and happiness.

With kindest regards,
EMWA Executive Committee