Connecting medical writers in Portugal through visual communication

Abstract

Portugal, the westernmost country in mainland Europe, still experiences a lack of awareness of the medical writing profession. Most medical writers work for contract research organizations (CROs) or in the few pharmaceutical companies that exist in the country. The lack of medical/health communication agencies is another limitation for medical writers, which is compounded by the fact that these agencies mostly outsource work to freelancers. On top of these constraints, the absence of communication between experts creates additional barriers for emerging opportunities. Thus, there is an urgent need for national communication between medical writing professionals in Portugal. A collaborative group of Portuguese medical writers could tackle these difficulties together through education and networking, thereby developing better specialists and advancing the medical writing profession in Portugal. We want to share our experience in establishing a Portuguese medical writer group and how visual communications helped us during this process.