Challenges and growth opportunities: the landscape of Chinese medical publication professionals in the global context: a questionnaire-based survey

Abstract

Objective

The Chinese healthcare industry has immense potential for innovation and requires competent publication professionals for global reach. Changes in regulatory landscape of China necessitates pharmaceutical industries to collaborate with medical professionals who are capable of keeping up with both changes in regulations and innovative medicine.

Methods

We initiated an online questionnaire-based survey via WeChat from August 3 to August 14, 2019 which focused on experience level, challenges, career development, and training requirements of survey participants.

Results

A total of 53 medical publication professionals participated in this survey. Contrary to global trends, 77% of participants had <5 years of professional experience in publication, although only 36% of participants had <5 years of experience in healthcare industry. In all, 63% of respondents spent <50% of their time in publication-related activities, contributing to <10 manuscripts per year. Their expertise in manuscripts spanned clinical studies (68%), post-marketing studies (62%), and reviews (38%). Poor research design and data quality, limited medical writing skill, and inefficient communication with authors were major challenges for developing high-quality publications. Awareness of good publication practices guidelines was high (49%) and 15% of respondents were Certified Medical Publication Professionals. Strategic publication planning (72%), industry trends (66%), and best practices (55%) were some of training requirements identified to increase competencies among respondents.

Conclusions

Although the Chinese medical publication professional industry is at a nascent stage, an attempt is being made to provide opportunities for its publication professionals to develop their competencies to match global standards.

Keywords:

• Cultural differences
• China
• medical publication profession
• medical writers
• training
• pharmaceutical industry

Transparency

Declaration of funding

This study is sponsored by ISMPP China outreach program task force.

Declaration of financial/other relationships

The authors do not have any financial relationships to declare.

Author contributions

All authors were involved in the conception and design of the study. including analysis and interpretation of the data. All authors were involved in drafting of the paper and revising it critically for intellectual content. All authors approved of the final version of this manuscript and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Anwesha Mandal from Indegene Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore, India for their medical writing support., with inputs from the authors.

Data availability statement

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Previous presentations

This study was presented as a poster at ISMPP 16th annual virtual meeting, held at National Harbor, USA.