European Medical Writers Association (EMWA)

EMWA is the European Medical Writers Association. EMWA is the network of professionals that represents, supports and trains medical communicators in Europe. It is a not for profit organisation that is run for its members by its members. The European Medical Writers Association was founded in 1989 by a small group of professional biomedical communicators with academic, industrial and journalistic affiliations. EMWA has grown since then and now has over 1,000 members from 39 different countries (including 12 countries outside Europe), and includes academics and professionals working in-house or freelance for pharmaceutical and medical communications companies, research institutes, and in the field of scientific journalism. Dr Helen Baldwin, a Past-President of EMWA, was interviewed on the subject of medical writing in general and EMWA in particular. This YouTube video is a perfect introduction to both areas. EMWA is a great place to pick up the skills needed to broaden your horizons as a medical writer. EMWA's aim is to provide educational and social networking opportunities for its members. It offers a broad variety of medical writing courses that cover topics including: writing and English language skills statistics for medical writers medical science and pharmacology medical writing in drug development writing manuscripts for publication writing for medical communications design and reporting of clinical trials The forum for training with EMWA is its annual conference, held in a different European city each spring, which provides a wonderful opportunity for networking, plenary lectures on key topics, strengthening your writing skills and sending out feelers to get a sense of other areas you might have been contemplating exploring as a writer. A shorter conference is also held each autumn. The EMWA Professional Development Programme allows you to build up professional development credits, which appear in a personal training record accessed through the website. By gaining 8 credits in the required combination you can apply for an EMWA certificate, which is a valuable addition to your CV. EMWA provides high quality training by instructors with years of experience as medical writers. The courses offered are selected carefully by the EMWA Professional Development Committee, and all courses are adjudicated by participants to verify their quality and usefulness. We try to cater to a broad audience of writers and are constantly tailoring and expanding our course selection to meet the needs of the members.