Article Summary: To choose a freelance medical writer, health organisations should look beyond a strong portfolio and assess whether the writer can evaluate evidence, understand compliance expectations, ask strategic questions, and shape communication for the intended audience. A responsible medical writer helps reduce risk before drafting begins by checking source quality, clarifying claims, documenting assumptions and ensuring the final communication is accurate, proportionate and useful.
Whether you’re a pharmaceutical company, patient organisation, MedAffairs team or healthcare communications agency, there may come a point when you need specialist medical writing support. However, knowing you need medical writing support and finding the right medical writer for your needs are two different things.
The risk of hiring a medical writer who isn’t up to your standards goes beyond a weak draft. The risk is work that overstates the evidence, creates compliance concerns, or fails to follow appropriate referencing and documentation processes.
On the other hand, a responsible medical writer helps reduce risk before drafting begins by checking source quality, clarifying claims, documenting assumptions and ensuring the final communication is accurate, proportionate and useful.
So, how do you find a medical writer who’s up to the task?
Here’s what every organisation should look for before hiring a medical writer, whether you’re growing your freelance bench or commissioning a one-time project.
4 Things to Look For When Hiring a Freelance Medical Writer
The basics are easy enough to find with a quick Google search: you want someone with a strong portfolio, good communication skills, great attention to detail, and a background that’s a strong match for the project or positions you’re hiring for, whether that’s developing a Clinical Study Report (CSR), a medcomms project, or your latest needs assessment.
In today’s hiring landscape, it can feel like a win to find someone who does have all of the above. But what might you miss when you stop there?
A strong freelance medical writer should not only be able to produce a polished deliverable and send a decent email. They should also help reduce your risk, improve clarity and strengthen the communication before the first draft is written.
Responsible writing practices
Most medical writers can do a good job of the tasks we tend to associate with the job: research a topic, summarise existing information, explain complex concepts in an easy-to-understand manner and produce a clear deliverable.
However, responsible health communication requires a writer to think about how the audience will interpret the message in context. Who is the intended audience? What does the audience already know, believe or misunderstand? What barriers might affect whether they trust or act on the information? Could the wording create unnecessary alarm, reinforce stigma, oversimplify risk or lead to false reassurance?
The answer will look different depending on the audience. Patients may be trying to make sense of a diagnosis or treatment option. Healthcare professionals may be balancing new information with clinical complexity, time pressure and local practice realities. Internal stakeholders may need communication to support decision-making, alignment, or approval.
A strong medical writer takes all of this into account to craft communications that are not only accurate but useful for the primary audience.
Evidence evaluation
A medical writer you want to work with should also be able to evaluate evidence. This doesn’t mean they need to be a statistician, but they shouldn’t take data at face value either.
A medical writer must understand how to assess the strength, limitations, and relevance of the evidence they use. They may consider study design, sample size, population, endpoints, methodology, p-values, confidence intervals, funding sources, publication quality and whether a finding is being interpreted in proportion to the data.
Evidence can be accurate and still cherry-picked or misused in communications to overclaim. Strong medical writers understand that there’s a difference between statistically significant and clinically meaningful, and that promising early data doesn’t translate to broad guidance. They know how to identify low-quality and predatory journals and raise any issues with data and evidence before they become issues.
Compliance and transparency
Every health communications project benefits when the medical writer working on it is risk-aware and prepared to be held accountable for the decisions that they make. Depending on the project type you’re searching for help on, you may have industry-specific guidelines you want your medical writer to be familiar with.
For example, in publications, the GPP 2022 is a key document for best writing practices. The ICMJE also provides criteria for authorship. Most industries have similar guidelines, from CME to promotional to regulatory.
No matter what type of medical writing you’re asking someone to do, claims, references, disclosures, review processes, approvals and documentation all need to be handled intentionally.
This is especially important in an AI-enabled working environment. If a writer uses AI tools, they should be able to explain how they use them, where human judgement enters the process and how they protect accuracy, confidentiality and source integrity.
Strategic judgement
Medical writers are increasingly moving into the role of strategic partners, shaping a document’s direction before the first draft is even written. A strategic medical writer can help clarify the objective, identify gaps in the brief, flag unsupported claims, question whether the format fits the audience and suggest a clearer way to frame the message.
This kind of judgement can be especially valuable when a project involves multiple stakeholders, complex evidence, sensitive subject matter, or a communication challenge that is not yet fully defined.
A medical writer who can contribute fresh ideas at this level represents more than an extra pair of hands. They are an undeniable asset to your team and your project.
What Questions Does The Medical Writer Ask?
Some skills – like strategic judgement – can be hard to measure based on one video interview. However, the questions that someone asks can show how much they have to offer.
A strong medical writer will ask insightful questions about the brief, the intended audience, the document’s objective, the stakeholders who will review it, and the intended use of the deliverable.
During the briefing stage, the medical writer’s questions help them do two things: assess whether the deliverable you have asked for is likely to achieve your goals; and gather enough information to ensure the final communication is accurate, appropriate, resonant with the intended audience and useful to the people who need to act on it.
Freelance Medical Writer vs. Agency: Decide What’s Right For Your Needs
It’s not always clear whether you need a freelancer or an agency. Both can be the right choice, depending on the project.
An agency may be the best fit when you need end-to-end project management, a large multidisciplinary team, multiple deliverables across workstreams, or an extra layer of process and oversight for a complex project.
A senior freelancer may be the better fit when you need direct access to specialist knowledge, continuity, flexibility or someone who can integrate quickly with an existing team. Freelancers can also be especially useful when you already have internal strategy, review and approval processes in place, but need experienced writing support to increase capacity or bring in a particular type of expertise.
The right choice depends on what you need the support to do:
Freelancer benefits:
- Seamless integration with your team
- Easy solution during a busy time
- More cost-effective than an agency
- Specialist knowledge
- Used to working independently – the right freelancer will come in ready to contribute
- Direct access to the person doing the work
Agency benefits:
- End-to-end support on a complex project
- Offer an extra layer of protection and rigour for projects requiring significant regulatory oversight
- You don’t have to manage feedback from multiple individuals
- Additional project management support
➡️Learn more about when a freelancer vs. an agency could be right for you
How to Hire a Medical Writer: 7 Questions to Ask Them
Feeling more equipped to hire a medical writer? Here’s an easy checklist you can use the next time you’re determining if a potential freelancer or agency contributor is the right fit for you.
- What kinds of health or medical projects have you worked on?
- How do you assess source quality?
- What do you need from us before you start?
- How do you manage review and feedback?
- What will you do if the evidence you find does not support the message we want to communicate?
- How do you document your sources, assumptions and use of AI tools, if applicable?
- How do you work with internal reviewers, faculty, or subject matter experts?
Find The Right Freelance Medical Writing Fit for Your Next Project Today
The right medical writer helps with the project before writing starts, ensuring the communication is aligned with the audience and stakeholder needs for clarity. If you’re hiring a medical writer, look for more than just a great portfolio: look for someone who is ready to collaborate on strategy, knows their way around compliance and can confidently check source credibility, and a writer who creates with the audience in mind.
Download the Smart Buyer’s Guide to Commissioning Medical Writing today to have a hiring resource in your back pocket, anywhere, anytime.
Frequently Asked Questions about Hiring a Medical Writer
Where are trustworthy places to look when hiring a medical writer?
Professional organisations such as AMWA, EMWA, ISMPP (publications), and ACEHP (CME/CE) usually have job boards. You can always find gems on LinkedIn and Upwork, but be prepared to wade through applications that aren’t a good fit. It may be prudent to do a quick Google search for freelance medical writers near you in your industry – most medical writers have websites now. And talking to colleagues to get a referral is a tried-and-true method.
How much does it cost to hire a medical writer?
It depends on what you’re looking for. While some may charge hourly, most writers will charge project rates or day rates. Cost will depend on the project’s complexity and length, compliance requirements, the number of review cycles you want, and the number of stakeholders involved.
What information should I give a medical writer before they quote?
Definitely include the timeline, how many revision cycles you expect, the final deliverables, the intended audience and purpose of the project, and commitments outside the writing itself, such as meetings and SME (subject matter expert) interviews.
Can a medical writer help if we don’t know exactly what we need yet?
Yes. An experienced medical writer can act as a strategic partner to clarify scope, purpose, audience, best format, message, and how a certain project fits into your larger body of work. The key is not to see this as “free work”. It is billable work, and part of the benefit of working with an experienced medical writer from pre-draft to deliverable.
