by Sue Hudson
How are medical communication departments organized in major pharmaceutical companies? How is the productivity of writers and editors measured? What impact does outsourcing have on document quality or on productivity? In an open session and poster presentation at this year's conference, results of a landmark 2009 survey conducted by AMWA and CMR International were reviewed.
Key findings:
1. Regulatory departments in most companies who responded to the survey outsource many document types, but not Phase 1, 2, and 3 clinical study reports.
2. The fact that 100% of respondents’ companies outsource the development of protocols for clinical studies was a surprise to the audience in the AMWA open session; discussion centered around the critical nature of these publications to any clinical study. (Maybe future research could find out why they’re outsourced.)
3. About half of manuscript writing is outsourced by big pharmaceutical and biotech companies that responded to the survey (good news for freelances and agencies).
4. Only 2.5% of respondents used out-of-country vendors (defined as vendors outside the country of the company doing the work; for example, for a company in Germany, sending a project to the U.S. would be out-of-country).
5. Document quality and lack of face-to-face communication were cited as obstacles to out-of-country outsourcing.
6. Resource constraints are the most common reason for the outsourcing of documents. Good experience with vendors, specialized vendor expertise, and cost were also noted.
7. Managers in 57% of companies said the quality of work done by in-house staff was better than that of vendors.
8. Managers in 62% of companies said there was no difference between the productivity of in-house staff and outside vendors; when a difference was seen, in-house staff was more productive…. BUT
9. Documents developed by outside vendors took longer to produce than those developed by in-house staff.
(And 10. Research is hard work and takes a long time.)
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