Yes, I am a medical writer and I now rely on Narrativa’s platform to get my job done! Here is my story

I am a freelance medical writer who works within a group of medical writers that provide medical writing services to CROs across the US and Europe. The week following the release of ChatGPT, I started looking into AI and I said to myself, this is interesting. I had a mix of fear and excitement. I was afraid because I thought AI could replace my job (that fear vanished as soon as I learned what generative AI hallucinations mean) and was excited thinking that I could use ChatGPT to get my job done faster and enjoy the rest of my day with my family. The excitement went away when I learned about the hallucination, data privacy, and technology limitations.

During that same week, after getting my coffee prepared, I fired up my Chrome and started digging online for AI in medical writing, and I came across a page called Narrativa. I combed through their website and a couple of their articles intrigued me, especially them discussing how their tool has no risk of hallucination and how it could get my job done in minutes. 

Less than a week to create 180 narratives

During that same period, one of my colleagues, and myself included, were tasked with creating oncology patient narratives for a CRO with a “limited” budget and a “tight” timeline. We have worked with that CRO before and we knew that the average narrative would take us around 2-2.5 hours. We were looking at 180 narratives. Not only did we have less than a week (I know what you are thinking: crazy but normal) to finish the project, but we already wasted two days with meetings, calls, trying to figure things out, and getting missing data. Long story short, we ended up extending that deadline to another week and asked the CRO if they were interested in bringing AI into the game, trying to save face with their client. Another long story short, they said yes. 

Not only did we have less than a week to finish the project, but we already wasted two days with meetings, calls, trying to figure things out, and getting missing data.

Working with Narrativa

Once I received that email, I went to Narrativa’s page and scheduled a meeting. I had what I can call “one of the most delightful meetings of my life”. In the meeting, they had people covering both the technical aspects (engineering and whatnot) and medical writing (I was shocked to know they have that in their team!). 

People from our end were medical writers and a statistical programmer with no tech people (just as you are thinking now, we thought we would not understand a thing). However, unlike all of our expectations, their tech and scientific team made things super clear, and knowing our short timeline and very limited budget, they agreed to do a reasonably priced pilot, and boy I am happy it went that way.

I remember this was on a Friday and their team probably worked during the weekend to align things and set up the platform to accommodate our needs. In the meantime, they sent us their training manual and videos, and we had calls with their onboarding team to help us figure out how to use the tool. I was super stressed during that weekend, counting the days and thinking that we had less than 6 days to deliver.

A medical writer or a cyborg?

Fast forward to three days before the deadline, they have the environment set up already and we received our access credentials. Truth be told, I had a mix of emotions again. I was afraid that we wasted our time, but again excited about the prospects of it working. After I tested it, I was mesmerized. The tool worked like a charm, I felt like a cyborg (super medical writer and hacker :P) for a minute, why? I pressed a couple of clicks and the platform generated the 180 narratives (using the ADaM datasets and the CIOMS)! I remember spending an average of 5 minutes to finish reviewing and perfecting a narrative! I was shocked, my colleague and I finished the whole work in less than 6 hours. Do you have an idea what this means? We finished what we would take 460 hours to finish in less than 6 hours! We finished the job and even created a mini competition of how fast the narratives were generated! Preparing a cup of coffee took more time than generating 40 narratives! 

We finished what we would take 460 hours to finish in less than 6 hours!

What if the data is missing or misaligned?

I know what you are thinking, how did you make sure everything was correct and in place, well my friend, the answer is simply because Narrativa thought of everything. They have a quality control bar (if the data is missing, misaligned, or wrong), you simply get a pop-up highlighting where the platform thinks you need to have a second look. By the way, we tested with 4 manually written narratives after we finished the job and Narrativa’s tool did better in terms of accuracy and consistency. It checked information that a stressed and overwhelmed person might overlook.

The Tony Stark of medical writing

To this day, I am still in awe of what this technology can do. We have introduced Narrativa to three of our clients and I am happy to report that this was one of the best fundamental decisions I have ever made in my whole entire career. With Narrativa patient narratives platform, I, as a person, have my whole day to myself. I actually started to enjoy my job again, because I feel like a futuristic cyborg or Tony Stark of medical writing, not needing to work everything out from scratch. I get to spend more time with my family because I now use the platform as my co-medical writer, where it does the heavy lifting and I do the fine-tuning. 

After all, we have not spent years of our lives being PharmDs, MScs, and MDs just to write narratives, right? There is more to life than just writing narratives, clinical study reports, and protocols. I do not know about you, but with more time at hand and less stress on my plate, I enjoy more time attending to my hobbies of camping and mountain biking. What would you do if you had more time at hand? 

C.S., Freelance Medical Writer

 I actually started to enjoy my job again