Medical writing around the world

Abstract

As many of you are already familiar, Medical Writing began as The Write Stuff, a publication written by and for EMWA members. One of the goals in making the transition to Medical Writing was that it would become an international journal with readers outside of Europe and EMWA. We are already on our way, with contributors frequently coming from outside of EMWA and Europe. But for me this is not enough. I am convinced that Medical Writing should reflect the increased globalisation of medical writing. More and more, medical writing is being done locally and not only in the traditional areas ofWestern Europe and North America. Medical writing is also now often being outsourced to countries like India, and many regions of the world, especially Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, have a substantial need for medical writing but are currently underserved. This creates vast new opportunities and challenges for medical writers. I therefore thought it important to organise an issue on medical writing around the world. When I sent out requests for contributions, I had no idea that I would get such a fantastic response. In this issue, we have 11 articles on medical writing in 10 countries or regions on 5 continents. As a side-benefit of putting together this issue, EMWA has developed new collaborations with the Spanish Association of Medical Writers and the Australasian Medical Writers Association, both of which have provided short articles on their associations. We will continue to seek out contributions from medical writers from around the world for future issues. This should make Medical Writing richer and more attractive to the global medical writing community.