An aspiring medical writer sent me a message saying how he is preparing to enter the world of #MedicalWriting, and he’s so excited to get started – but he’s having doubts about #AI making his dream career obsolete. Does this sound like you?
🏆 Let’s get one thing straight, my friend: AI cannot exist without human input.
📊 That’s right, it needs data.
⛰ Mountains of it.
🗣 The more data it has, the more it can do. But, it still needs someone to tell it what to do with all that data and how to show it to you (give you an output while pretending to sound like a human).
💡 Here are 6 points to take your #AI worries away, and highlight some opportunities:
🐎 1. You could work with AI by being an “AI trainer” where you input the data.
You choose what good data looks like, which credible studies you want it to reference and how you want it to write.
💻 2. You could work with AI by writing “prompts”.
A prompt is a collection of instructions you give to AI, so it can give you the output you want. For example, you could say “I am a 12 year old and I just broke my arm. Explain what treatment I will get, and how long it will take to get better.”
⚙ 3. You could use AI to build a content system.
Instead of focusing on AI replacing your writing, you could instruct it to repurpose what you have already written – create short animated videos, powerpoints, infographics etc – even SEO optimise your content. This still requires your original writing as input.
📝 4. Become an AI editor.
Yes, AI will be writing based on your prompts, and you will need to edit it for tone of voice, cultural references, accessibility, brand messaging, suitability for your audience and more. With high volumes of content, you may be reading more than you are writing to improve the quality of content.
✅ 5. Become an accuracy checker.
You’ll need to check the references AI have made are not fabricated, and that the information makes sense – especially health and medical information, where there is no room for errors (as it could affect the life of a human).
📆 6. Keep track of content you create with AI so you can easily search it and update it.
We all know health content is only valid for so long, until a study or trial comes out that changes our current practice in medicine and our health beliefs. So use AI to your advantage by feeding it up-to-date data and tell it to screen what you have written in the past to identify content you need to update.
🛠 As a tool, #AI is not our nemesis as medical writers. It will be something we use as part of our creative process as writers.
👨🏼🔧 👩🏾🔧 As a machine, #AI will always need someone who understands it to “maintain” it, as there will always be “old data” and “new data”.
❓ So what does this mean for medical writing?
📚 There will be a greater variety of jobs (not seemingly “fewer” jobs).
✅ And you will develop a wider set of skills, and become an octopus 🐙