Summary of Changes and List of Abbreviations Generators

Continuing on our theme of Medical Writing Superpowers (Efficiency, Compliance, Cooperation, Accuracy, Consistency, Presentation, Voice) and the tools to help you achieve them, I wanted to next highlight SOC and abbreviations generators. 

Summary of Changes Generators (Activate your powers for Efficiency, Compliance, Accuracy, Presentation) 

Creating a summary of changes is required for many updated clinical documents. They can take a great deal of time to develop and maintain. 

• Regardless of the level of specificity in the final SOC document, an automated SOC generator can be helpful to quickly identify what requires noting. 

• A writers’ take is still needed to accurately consolidate similar changes and to position the rationales, but streamlining the labor involved in isolating content and flattening text saves time and energy.  

• It also can reduce the time it takes to QC an SOC as any copied text would be free of potential human error. 

• Software that distills the changes beyond a copy of a redline document is a niche product, but they are helpful for writers responsible for this document type. 

List of Abbreviations Generators (Activate your powers for Efficiency, Accuracy, Consistency) 

Similar to the SOC assisting software, having an automated way to isolate acronyms and abbreviations can be a huge time saver for writers and QCers. 

• Rather than relying on your eyes or endless “find” commands, software that scans the document for these items and compiles the results can expedite the creation of the list of abbreviations that likely heads your document. 

• The output of such a scan can also be used to confirm the definitions and first use within the document. 

• The user requirements for such a tool are straightforward. Likely the writer would have work to do with the output, but cultivating the results via software saves time and improves accuracy. 

Michael Claffey

Chief Operating Officer