The same, but completely different

Not the plan

I never set out to work in MedComms. And yet, more than 26 years later, I’m still here. It’s been a lot of things: educational; challenging; amazing; scary; varied. Definitely varied: creating books full of hundreds of pages of dense data and analysis; bringing science to life via 3D medical animations; interviewing early treatment innovators about their breakthrough research; running with crazy design themes for symposia that required permission from Hollywood studios; even somehow being involved with editing a magazine about fine wristwatches. But that barely scratches the surface, and none of it was part of the plan. If there’s one thing that ties it all together, it’s change. The work, the tools and the expectations have never stopped evolving, and I’ve had to do a lot of learning and adapting too.

I joined what’s now Scientific Group in the summer of 2000, with 6 months’ experience editing medical journals behind me. Back then the company was called Remedica, and had two arms: publishing and communications. I was in publishing, as an editor on quarterly review journals. I learned skills I still use every day: how to copy-edit and proofread properly, how to work to a timeline, how to plan ahead and juggle several things at once, and how to build real relationships with thought leaders across therapy areas.

Moments in time

A year or two in, I moved onto our first monthly title, Clinical Researcher. That meant commissioning a steady flow of articles, planning each issue page by page – advertisements and all – and working closely with the journal’s editor-in-chief, a clinician and researcher with an extraordinary number of contacts and a prodigious talent for being involved in a vast range of innovative research topics simultaneously. It taught me about planning under pressure and about keeping regular contributors happy, but it also left room for creativity: we chose the lead article for each issue and worked with the design team on a cover illustration to match it. I didn’t know it at the time, but that combination of discipline, precision and creativity was a great mix, helping me develop skills I’ve been able to apply to a great many things since.

From there I moved into books: editing in-depth chapters, managing dozens of contributors, proofreading complex content that could run into hundreds of pages. Books led to journal supplements, those led to advisory boards and symposia, and somewhere along the way I crossed over from publishing into medical communications without ever consciously deciding to. There was even a detour I’d never expected to take: a year or so as managing editor of QP, a monthly magazine devoted to luxury watches and the company’s one and only non-medical venture. It was a world entirely alien to me, but it taught me how to write news, work with image-led layouts, and help start a publication from scratch. Lots of new experiences that needed me to keep adapting.

At the sharp end

Eventually I was leading a team of editors across a hugely diverse range of projects: symposia, standalone meetings, books, online training, a podcast-style series we called Talking Medicine, and online meetings that felt genuinely futuristic back in 2010, to name just a handful. We had a near-constant production line of 3D animations and spun them off into their own brand. What made it both exciting and nerve-wracking was that we kept trying things nobody had done before, including us. We’d sell a project, then kick it off and realise we had to work out how to actually deliver it. The day the iPad launched, we were already building detail aids for it.

I won’t pretend it’s always been fun. I’ve had to do the occasional all-nighter, and I’ll never forget finalising the slides for a standalone meeting late into the night, then realising there was only time for 45 minutes of sleep before helping to run the first day of the event. Bringing a client’s vision of Thorassic Park to life as a dinosaur-inspired symposium theme – with The Full Monty following the year after – was in equal parts hilarious and terrifying. But we did it, and those sessions were certainly memorable. What stays with me, though, isn’t the pressure – it’s the colleagues I went through it all with, whose collaboration and friendship made everything not just achievable but somehow fun, even in what felt, at the time, like impossible situations.

All of this happened before we had account managers, so editors did everything: project management, liaison with clients and healthcare professionals, and the medical content itself. It became untenable, so we changed. We built an account management team, publishing gradually phased out, editors became medical writers, and we turned into something much closer to a traditional MedComms agency.

Better together

I now head a department of almost 40 medical writers, and the biggest thing I’ve learned is also one of the simplest: the only thing that doesn’t change is that everything is always changing. Being able to live with that, and to keep yourself on the fringes of your comfort zone, is something to try not to fear, but to embrace. I’ve learned an enormous amount from the projects themselves, but it’s the people I’ve worked alongside who have left the deepest impression. I’ve crossed paths with so many brilliant people over the years, and every one of them has shaped how I work. I’m especially grateful to the handful of colleagues who’ve been here almost as long as I have (and one or two for even longer!) for all the ideas, questions, disagreements, challenges, support and collaboration that have kept me going in the right direction.

I’ve been lucky to watch the company evolve too, from around 25 people in 2000 to about 100 today, through a series of new ventures and rebrands, most recently into Scientific Group. The leadership changed about 8 years ago, and with it came a real appetite to do things better, and to balance people, planet and profit rather than chasing one at the expense of the others. In practice that means thinking seriously about our impact on the environment, looking after the wellbeing of the people who work here, and making enough to sustain a business that can keep investing in what it believes in. I think that’s a goal worth having, and an important one. For me it’s meant time to learn and the chance to volunteer and give something back, while the company stays willing to keep pace with whatever comes next.

The next chapter

Right now, the thing we’re all trying to keep pace with is AI. Plenty of technologies have promised to change everything: the web maturing from a novelty into a serious medical communications channel, the arrival of smartphones, tablets and apps, and the world embracing virtual meetings. AI feels bigger and faster than any of them, and we’re all trying to figure out how to make the best of it. It can draft, summarise and speed many things up, and it’s already reshaping approaches like modular content and omnichannel delivery. But the things it can’t do matter just as much: sustain a relationship with a thought leader, exercise the judgement that keeps content accurate and compliant, or coordinate all the moving parts of a typical MedComms project. The answer is probably to treat it as a capable colleague whose work always needs checking, rather than as either a threat or a miracle cure. One thing is for sure: it’s changing the job, and it’s a timely reminder of how important adaptability is.

And really, that’s the thread running through all 26 years. Nothing stays still, there’s always a better way to do something, and the way healthcare professionals and patients seek and absorb information keeps evolving. It’s a hard industry to work in for exactly that reason, and that’s also what makes it rewarding, because the work we do changes how patients are treated, even if we often don’t get to see it. The longer I work in MedComms, the more I have still to learn, and the more I grow because of it. So while I never set out to work in MedComms, it’s been an amazing environment to be in. Thanks to all the experiences, and all the people, I’ve not just become better at my job and helped to improve healthcare for patients, I’ve become a better person.