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Subject:Re: Why so few medical techwriters From:"Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sat, 21 Aug 2004 17:06:08 -0700
This is not true at all. The need for medical products to be easier for
medical professionals to use does result in more attention paid to things
like usability in design that reduces the size of end user instructions, but
the smaller quantity of documentation required is the direct result of the
enormous effort that goes into the design of the products. Also, medical
products still require vast quantities of documentation before they can be
approved for sale and use. It is simply that most of that documentation
requires extremely specialized medical or regulatory knowledge, and due
to the enormous potential for liability in the event of error, almost none
of it is farmed out to contractors. So while it may seem to the contractor
that there is less writing, it is more accurate to say that there is less writing
that manufacturers are willing to trust to to outside contractors. Even at
the lowest depths of the recent downturn, demand for qualified medical
writers was quite strong, but extremely few of the large numbers of writers
who lost their jobs in software and other nonmedical fields were qualified
to fill it.
Gene Kim-Eng
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark L. Levinson" <nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il>
>
> In short, medical products
> need less writing than software products.
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