How to find the right writer for your lay summaries of clinical trial results

It’s ironic: writing lay summaries—which are intended to make understanding clinical trial results simpler for trial participants—can be a complicated process.

 

Producing consistent, high-quality, compliant lay summaries comes with multiple requirements. Lay summary writers need familiarity with the trial itself, information about the investigational medicinal products used, and understanding of the regulatory guidelines dictating development of the summary.

 

What’s more, lay summary writers need expert facility with language and grammar. Their writing must be clear—so clear, in fact, that a person with no scientific background can understand the summary.

 

Finally, lay summary writers should prepare the source document with translation in mind, in order to facilitate the translation of the lay summary into relevant target languages.

The combination of critical components needed to produce lay summaries requires skill and experience that most trial sponsors lack in-house. And yet, some in-house resources are assigned the task of generating lay summaries by default. At first glance, this might make sense—in-house experts are, of course, closely affiliated with the trial. They know the trial’s details, they may have interacted with trial facilitators and patients, they understand the trial’s outcomes and the implications of those outcomes.

 

Expecting them, however, to have the scientific acumen and the process and language skills necessary for lay summary development is often too much to ask. Relying on constrained resources only adds more to the trial sponsor’s to-do list—and struggling to create a high-quality lay summary can lead to frustrating and costly delays and miscommunications. 

 

There is a better way.

When you partner with a trusted and experienced language service provider, you can leverage the talents of technical writers who have the right combination of skills needed to produce, review, and translate high-quality lay summaries.

 

At RWS, for example, we have a stable of technical writers who have the skills and experience needed to produce high-quality lay summaries on time and on budget. Our writers:

 

 

We are incredibly selective when we hire technical writers for plain language summaries. Our professional writers have deep experience writing for life sciences clients and understand the procedural and linguistic challenges of producing lay summaries of clinical trial results. Our team comprises skilled writers who also have scientific backgrounds, so they understand the medical jargon and industry-specific terminology that may characterize your existing trial-related content. What’s more, our writers have produced multiple lay summaries for other clients and understand the requirements surrounding the task.

 

Our writers have that ideal trifecta: scientific expertise, regulatory familiarity, and excellent writing skills that enable clear communication with your specific audience. 

 

 

If a sponsor has already created a lay summary but needs assistance evaluating whether the intended audience will understand it, our writers can help. We perform readability assessments on existing lay summaries to ascertain whether the writing is clear and understandable by a non-scientific person. What’s more, our writers can assess the quality of the source document for translation. If our team finds that the lay summary is not sufficiently readable or translatable, we can make the necessary changes to improve the summary and prepare for translation.

 

 

Sponsors frequently conduct trials in areas where participants speak multiple languages. As such, sponsors must frequently produce lay summaries in multiple languages.

 

Our technical writers will draft the lay summary in one source language, but they always do so with the upcoming translation in mind. That means they do things like keep sentences short, use the active voice, remain cognizant of international dates and times, etc.

 

Preparing the source document for translation from the very beginning of the process ultimately reduces translation time and can make lay summary development more cost-effective.

 

Ready to outsource your lay summary development? We can help!

 

RWS Life Sciences has a complete suite of clinical trial-related services to help sponsors with all the linguistic requirements of their trials. Our team of talented technical writers is always ready and willing to work with sponsors on developing clear, high-quality lay summaries that are both efficient and effective.

 

Ready to get started? Reach out to us today to learn more about how we can help.