Market Challenges: Shortage of skilled medical writing professionals

The shortage of skilled medical writers can hamper the global medical affairs outsourcing market growth. Medical writing plays a pivotal role in the medical affairs function by developing communication strategies, programs, content and other documentation to help life sciences companies adhere to compliance guidelines and improve patient outcomes. However, lack of qualified professionals who have an understanding of both medical and scientific concepts as well as experience in writing for external stakeholders such as other healthcare specialists, patients and regulatory agencies can hamper the market growth. This skill gap makes it difficult for medical affairs outsourcing companies to take up new projects and meet existing client demand in a timely manner. Due to rising complexity of therapeutics and regulations, medical documents need to be written and designed by experts who can translate complex outcomes and research into simple yet accurate language. However, many educational institutes are still catching up with industry needs and not producing enough medical writers with suitable training. This leads to high attrition rates at medical writing firms as existing talent is poached by larger players. Recruitment and training new hires can take from 6 months to 1 year depending on an individual's adaptability and competencies.

Market Opportunities: Adoption of advanced technologies like AI and analytics

Adoption of advanced technologies like AI and analytics provides a great opportunity for the global medical affairs outsourcing market growth. As the healthcare industry accumulates vast amounts of complex data from various sources like EMR systems, clinical trials, medical imaging, and others, AI and analytics can help unlock insights from this data. Pharmaceutical and medical device companies can leverage AI and analytics through outsourcing partners, to gain a deeper understanding of areas like patient outcomes, treatment effectiveness, adverse drug reactions and more. This clinical data analysis can help expedite drug discovery and development. AI tools that can sift through huge databases of research papers, clinical studies and unstructured text can also augment medical affairs functions. Applications of natural language processing and machine learning can accelerate literature monitoring and surveillance. It helps outsourcing companies to provide real-time, actionable insights to their life sciences clients. Advanced analytics further helps identify ideal patient populations for clinical trials and recruitment. It allows for better monitoring of trial endpoints and milestones.