Written by Dom Partridge, Medical Writer
Happy National Writing Day 2021! In line with this year’s theme of ‘connections’, our medical writers have taken a look back at our UK health technology assessments (HTA) submissions over the past 12 months…
Connections are at the heart of our business; every day we connect with clients, colleagues, and patients to deliver written materials which make a difference to patient care.
At Source, writing submissions for HTAs are among the biggest writing projects we work on. HTAs help connect patients to new treatments, by evaluating the efficacy and economic value of a new drug or technology.
Whilst working remotely over the past year, we have worked on 11 UK HTAs across a range of disease and therapy areas, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. Because these submissions are so important, our medical writing team needs to make every word count.
So, we decided to count their words. Luckily, Microsoft Word does this for us, and as you can see from the numbers below, that is a huge relief!
- Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma: 107,894 words
- Cardiovascular disease: 97,919 words
- Inflammatory skin disorder: 97,238 words
- Rare genetic disorders: 61,653 words
- Breast cancer: 49,940 words
- Kidney cancer: 34,175 words
- Rhinosinusitis: 27,107 words.
Giving us an estimated total number of 475,926 words written this year. So, we’ve certainly been busy! Each HTA submission will hopefully allow patients to access the best new treatments. To put these numbers into context, have a look at the figure below which compares the word counts of some famous novels with our combined HTA projects over the past year…
#FILLTHEBOX creative writing challenge
Finally, because it’s National Writing Day, it’s only prudent to finish with an attempt at a poem (remember, we’re scientists, not creative writers, at heart), drawing inspiration from the National Writing Day prompt of connections…
So in the spirit of connections, why not connect with us on LinkedIn? We’d love to talk to you about how we can help you connect your treatments with patients.
If you would like to learn more about HTA submissions (including systematic reviews, health economic modelling, and medical writing), please contact us at Source Health Economics, an independent consultancy specialising in evidence generation, health economics, and communication.
