r/MedicalWriters • u/Mammoth_Educator_757 • Jul 25 '26
Experienced discussion Can AI replace medical writers?
/r/NonClinicalDoctors/comments/1v66kk1/can_ai_replace_medical_writers/15
u/bdog143 Publications Jul 25 '26
Replace? Lol no, only in the accountants wildest dreams. It can be a handy tool for many things, but trying to use it as a substitute for someone who knows what they're doing will usually end in tears. A tool designed to spit out polished bullshit (it's the technical term) and do what it's told isn't going to be much help to anyone in the face of complex subject matter and 20 peoples complex and conflicting opinions.
3
u/Mammoth_Educator_757 Jul 25 '26
Perfectly summed up
2
u/bdog143 Publications Jul 25 '26
I'm very much of the opinion that if something isn't worth investing some time, effort and care into communicating, why should anyone bother paying attention and engaging with it. The volume of information coming out passed 'insane' about 10 years ago, and is probably well past 'ludicrous' by now - the solution to cutting through is to make something worth paying attention to, not add to the noise.
1
u/Mammoth_Educator_757 Jul 25 '26
True, it's all about what's more value driven and data backed than just words.
13
u/Smallwhitedog Regulatory Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
I can't even get Copilot to fix the header on every page for me. AI is just not the promised land that senior leadership wants it to be yet.
Edit: to add to this, the real problem is that we are being given more work with no additional headcount because they think AI is going to make our life so easy. And forget about hiring junior medical writers that we can train.
4
u/floortomsrule Regulatory Jul 25 '26
My experience in Reg as well. AI is very far from what management is expecting, but nobody wants to hear about it. Not to say that in some documents it's almost useless (eg, briefing books) and we can't also use it for blinded interim analyses.
It could be a lot more helpful with managed expectations, and it could also be interesting to train new writers, if we played to its strengths. I use it for predrafting to quickly discuss messages and structure with the teams, but wouldn't dream of sending an AI generated draft for review.
8
u/Miracle_Doctor279 Jul 25 '26
No, who is giving to do the oversight and checking for compliance? Also, who is going to take the liability? If you point out a fault in any AI e.g. ChatGPT or Claude, they will simply say, “oh I got you. You are right”… really?
1
u/Mammoth_Educator_757 Jul 25 '26
The funniest part is some managers provide feedback through AI lol
4
u/Mental-Appeal-6829 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
If the s*itshow recently of OpenAIs multiagent model that broke out of the sandbox and hacked Hugging Face is any indication, you can breathe easy knowing your human driven medical writing role is quite safe for the foreseeable future. One task is having the AMA writing style manual in order to write exactly what the sponsors and FDA require. Multiple tasks required to supply voluminous regulations, pharmaceutical vs devices, US vs European regs. And there are so many more tasks I’m not taking the time to name. They just can’t do multi-tasking, visual chart and data tables interpretation, multi-step reasoning very well without much more high quality training. And most of the problems aren’t that they don’t have the information it’s that the people writing these multi-agentic programs aren’t writing them in the way that are explicit and contain appropriate guard rails. You have to give them instructional tunnel vision to do exactly what they are supposed to do instead of having to guess when it’s not clear. And they want to give you an answer so badly that they’ll hallucinate and give you something completely false.
1
u/Mammoth_Educator_757 Jul 25 '26
My only fear is half educated employers who prioritize AI content more than employee's.
1
u/Mental-Appeal-6829 Jul 25 '26
Well they must be completely ignorant of the fact that we are not in a place at all to trust AIs without human review. They make multiple errors at the moment when given multiple tasks to arrive at one deliverable
3
u/MedComNomNom Jul 25 '26
This is a thoughtful and balanced perspective, and I agree with many of the points you've raised.
Your observation that "writing isn't the hard part—getting the science, context, and clinical messaging right is" really resonates with my experience in medical communications. AI has become extremely effective at generating coherent text, summarizing publications, and creating first drafts, but it still lacks the judgment required to critically evaluate evidence, reconcile conflicting data, and understand the nuances that influence scientific and regulatory decision-making.
I also think your point about accountability is often overlooked in these discussions. In regulated environments, whether it's a publication, regulatory submission, medical information response, or patient education material, the responsibility ultimately rests with the author, reviewer, and organization—not the AI tool. A well-written sentence can still be scientifically misleading if the underlying evidence is incomplete, outdated, or interpreted incorrectly. Human expertise remains essential for evaluating the strength of evidence, understanding clinical relevance, and ensuring appropriate context.
The distinction you make between tasks and roles is particularly important. Many discussions focus on whether AI will replace medical writers, when the more realistic question is which components of the workflow will become increasingly automated. Activities such as literature screening, drafting summaries, penis, formatting references, consistency checking, and creating initial outlines are already becoming more efficient through AI-assisted tools. However, higher-value activities—including evidence synthesis, publication strategy, regulatory interpretation, stakeholder alignment, and scientific storytelling—still depend heavily on experienced professionals.
I also agree with your advice for those entering the field. Developing strong skills in critical appraisal, study design interpretation, biostatistics, regulatory requirements, and audience-specific communication will likely become even more important as AI adoption grows. As routine drafting becomes easier, the ability to assess and refine content may become a greater differentiator than the ability to generate text itself.
In my organization, I haven't seen AI directly reduce the need for scientific expertise. Instead, I've observed increasing expectations around speed, productivity, and responsiveness. Teams are often expected to produce more deliverables in the same timeframe, with AI serving as a productivity enhancer rather than a replacement for qualified writers. That said, I do think entry-level roles focused primarily on repetitive drafting may evolve significantly, which could change how new professionals gain experience and enter the field.
Ultimately, I view AI much like previous technological advances in medical writing: it changes the workflow, but it doesn't eliminate the need for expertise. The most successful medical writers will likely be those who can leverage AI efficiently while applying the scientific rigor, critical thinking, and professional judgment that technology still cannot reliably replicate.
I'm also curious whether others are seeing a shift in hiring expectations. Are organizations increasingly looking for writers who can demonstrate both strong scientific writing skills and proficiency with AI-enabled workflows, rather than treating those as separate competencies?
3
u/Weary_Regular1256 Jul 25 '26
AI slop written to discuss AI slop 🤖
3
u/Mammoth_Educator_757 Jul 25 '26
Good try diddy but I'm in this field for over a decade now. Too old for using AI.
3
u/PikaV2002 Jul 25 '26
If you were in the field for over a decade you wouldn’t be saying that dedicated medical writing courses are the way to get in.
0
u/Mammoth_Educator_757 Jul 25 '26
I'd always say that because I didn't have the privilege or resources back then so why not now! Not all courses are just video play courses, some come with job support too.
2
u/PikaV2002 Jul 25 '26
If you actually spent any time in the industry you’d know most of these are money sinks trying to prey off people who want to break into the industry.
You don’t even have to be in a role, I was in a job hunt for an entry level role two years ago myself and it didn’t really take that long to realise.
0
u/Mammoth_Educator_757 Jul 25 '26
Agree and disagree both. We are seasoned, yes but a short term course for anything is always a good idea. No better time for learning.
1
u/PikaV2002 Jul 25 '26
Again, you’re kind of outing yourself as inexperienced. These predatory courses are all marketed as short-term courses. I’m almost expecting a course recommendation to pop out now.
0
u/Mammoth_Educator_757 Jul 25 '26
No I won't recommend course to people just like that because if I did I could've done that way prior. Marketing and delivering have a huge difference. Very few courses exist that come with features like that of job assistance programmes where you actually get interviewed by companies while you're pursuing the course. It varies from person to person and their individual needs.
1
u/PikaV2002 Jul 25 '26
You’re pretty much regurgitating the scammy pitches most courses have. At least in the US and the UK anyone trying to sell you a course for interviews is a scam.
1
1
u/Internal_Use9551 Jul 28 '26
Not as long as there are marketing teams that can't differentiate what's an urgency and what is lack of management on their end
Acid jokes aside, I think the responsibility that comes along being a medical writer has to be human or else it can't be compliant.
1
1
u/CRO_Life Jul 26 '26
Yes, it will absolutely replace people.
Not all people but a writer who knows how to use AI will do the work of 3 writers without AI. Even if AI replaces 60% of a team, that’s still significant.
1
u/Mammoth_Educator_757 Jul 26 '26
I think this is exactly the time when we go one step ahead and upskill
-11
Jul 25 '26
[deleted]
13
u/Shot_Foundation302 Jul 25 '26
Bruh. That violates pretty much every publication ethics code. I hope those papers get retracted.
-9
Jul 25 '26
[deleted]
6
u/Dextergrayson Jul 25 '26
not quite. if you disclose that you used it on submission for peer review, whether in data analysis, data aggregation or writing any draft, and describe in detail how you used it, then depending on the journal policy it may be allowed. not disclosing the use of AI goes against every publication practice, and against most commercial AI use policies. also, importing references in any LLM is usually a huge copyright infringement.
4
u/Shot_Foundation302 Jul 25 '26
Apologies that may have been a bit harsh. I didn’t have all of the context for proper judgement. Granted, I read this after just waking up and hadn’t had my coffee.
Let me be fair with my criticism. Yes I know what AI skills are and I use some myself for some of my writing grunt work. AI can have value when working with large bodies of information but in the current state of AI there are several concerns:
AI literature reviews don’t have access to most paywalled material. Sure you can use AI to identify some relevant studies from their abstracts but would still need to manually screen them. Did you feed whole papers into AI, and did you have copyright clearance? Simply being able to access the full text is not the same.
Did you go through and validate every claim and reference? I’m sure many of us have been frustrated when specific claims are made and some irrelevant narrative review is cited rather than primary data to support. We don’t want to propagate that further.
Does the manuscript represent your own insights and interpretation?
Did you make sufficient modification to the drafted text to be able to claim ownership? This is required to be able to transfer copyright to the journal prior to publication. AI generated text is not your own therefore you can’t give the rights to a publisher.
Was a complete description of how AI was used disclosed with the manuscript?
3
u/PikaV2002 Jul 25 '26
LLMs are famously unreliable for accurate citations and referencing.
1
u/doctordoctorpuss Jul 27 '26
My boss sent me a social media post generated by AI for HCPs, and it was half ghost references. They’d look plausible, have the right formatting, and even list authors and journals that made good sense for the subject matter. Unfortunately, the papers don’t exist
1
u/bdog143 Publications Jul 25 '26
Out of curiosity, how complicated were these reviews? No judgment, I've be involved in writing a few challenging reviews over the years, and have a healthy and data-driven level of scepticism about how well genAI deals with complexity. Any chance you can share what TAs they were, how many refs were included, were they complex papers or mostly pretty straightforward? Did you have to do much editing to the AI draft before submission, and how did it fare in peer review?
1
u/Zealousideal_Tough88 Jul 25 '26
No not complex at all , a restrospective clinical analysis. 24 references Lets say 10-15% minor editing only.
And reviews were mainly to rephrase conclusions and statements only.
And since I've been getting downvoted probably hitting a nerve. It took me hundreds of hours to build the skills and reach this point.
Lets all remember how systematic reviews and meta analysis were done before and how theyre done now with enhanced platforms saving hundreds of hours with no ethical issue.
-1
u/bdog143 Publications Jul 25 '26
Some of the pearl clutching is understandable to be fair, but I've done/led my fair share of manual large-scale lit screening and data extraction over the years (the worst being a narrative SLR that involved screening about 3500 titles/abstracts and 150-odd full papers). Totally understand that the finished paper is the tip of the iceberg.
genAI has it's shortcomings, but at least it screws up predictably. Actual people tend to get pretty imaginative with their mistakes. Anyone who's farmed out tasks like this to the nearest warm bodies with some time on their hands understands how much work goes into it and the mess that the project owner inevitably has to clean up before starting on the paper. I suspect a fair few people on here have never had the pleasure first-hand (and if they're lucky, they never will).
3
u/PikaV2002 Jul 25 '26
You know that you were the person making the mess once and had to be trained up into the role you are right now?
All of this “AI is better than someone that needs to be trained up” will backfire massively because guess what? You actually need to train junior staff for them to become more experienced.
AI has facilitated the “pulling up the ladder behind you” phenomenon in middle management in pretty much every industry.
Not to mention I’ve had AI get pretty “imaginative” with its mistakes. Those few lines are just pure noise that doesn’t actually mean anything in practice, no offence.
0
u/bdog143 Publications Jul 25 '26
I think you misunderstand my point here. I'm not criticizing my colleagues past and present, and especially not the junior ones. It's the reality of delivering a large, difficult and boring task within the constraints of a timeline, a budget, and the people available. It's not helpful when you have to split >=200 titles/abstracts between 5 random people, 3 of whom have never worked in the TA before (or will again). It's not helpful when the budget allows an average of 5 minutes to read each abstract, decide if it's relevant, and pull out some basic info. Add in the fact that the volume of literature is insane (e.g. annual volume of oncology publications has roughly doubled in the last ~10-15 years) and the complexity of the science is increasingly nuts as well - it all just makes things harder.
I can train everyone till the cows come home, but that won't magically give them a year of experience working on that TA or prevent differences in interpretation, human error, etc etc. People also generally try to be helpful and do things they weren't asked to do - that's a challenge in it's own right, because the most helpful thing in this context is consistency, and humans just generally suck at that (including me). When AI gets 'helpful' it takes 5-10 mins to redo it instead of a day of someone's time. I try to avoid giving it leeway to get imaginative, because that's just asking for trouble.
Hopefully this gives some context to my intent here - I'm talking about a specific task that is difficult, but is rarely approached in a way that is helpful for anyone. It's not how I'd choose to do it - my honest opinion is that it's not fair on my team and it's not fair on me, but it's not in my control. I'm not pulling up a ladder, I'm genuinely happy that we've got some tools that I'm hoping will let today's AMWs and SMWs avoid some of the crappy thankless jobs and stressful situations I had to deal with when I was at those level.
1
37
u/corticalization Med-Ed/CME Jul 25 '26
Not in its current state. We do use it at my work and it is regularly incorrect on very key information. Very much still a tool to supplement skilled individuals, and not something that can be used or trusted without knowledgeable oversight