ROI Clinic

The spiraling cost of clinical references
In pharmaceutical promotion, writers and editors have always provided annotated clinical references to document their work. Today, the demands of documentation are more rigorous than ever, as Pharma regulatory increases its vigilance to protect companies from lawsuits. The costs for ordering PDFs of references (from a library service or publisher), printing them out, preparing them, and copying them can be enormous. Here are some ways to save.

Ordering references. Commit your company to ordering a PDF of a reference once for all eternity. One of the biggest sources of waste is ordering the same PDF (typically $30 to $60 a pop) again and again by different teams. Create a PDF library, managed by one person, and instate a policy to check the library before any new, paid order is placed.

Printing, highlighting, copying. Ideally, PDFs would never be printed at all, but would be reviewed and highlighted electronically via Adobe software. To do this, however, requires building in 2 extra days for the writer to prep and organize the PDFs and annotated manuscript. It takes writers significantly longer to prepare the references electronically than in traditional hard copy, although the process saves time and money down the line. So, if the time budgeted for writing is very tight, consider printing out the PDFs and highlighting the old fashioned way, right on the hard copy.