At the 2025 Eduvos University Interdisciplinary Bootcamp in Pretoria, South Africa, I had the opportunity to speak about one of the most pressing questions facing the next generation of medical communicators: What does AI mean for the future of medical writing, and how can we safeguard the trust that patient communication depends on?
Medical writing has always been about clarity, accuracy, and responsibility. Now, we’re seeing AI tools step in to support those goals, but AI also introduces new challenges, particularly around data privacy, regulatory compliance, and ethical care.
As a writer with a background in neuroscience and a passion for simplifying complexity, I’ve witnessed firsthand how AI is reshaping the way we work, and why HIPAA compliant platforms like Paubox are needed.
Why medical writers are turning to AI
For many of us, medical writing began with a love for language and a drive to make scientific information more accessible. That passion often developed through academic training, in my case, during a master's in neuroscience and years teaching health science students. The work is precise, highly regulated, and always centered around human lives.
Today, AI is helping medical writers manage increasing workloads by automating parts of the content creation process. Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, BioGPT, and PubMedGPT now support everything from:
- Literature reviews and summarization
- Drafting patient-friendly educational material
- Regulatory writing and compliance documentation
- Outlining manuscripts or scientific reports
- Identifying diseases, medications, or gene names through Natural Language Processing (NLP)-based tagging
These tools dramatically speed up early-stage research and drafting. For instance, BioBERT and Med-PaLM offer natural language processing tailored to medical contexts, while SciSummary and Semantic Scholar help writers quickly surface new studies with relevant clinical findings.
Benefits and drawbacks of using AI
On one hand, AI supports a more personalized and data-rich writing process. With access to electronic health records (EHRs), clinical trial databases, and medical journals, writers can generate more personalized content in a shorter period.
On the other hand, the same technology raises major concerns:
- Bias in training data can lead to misrepresentation or generalizations that harm underrepresented groups.
- The lack of transparency regarding decision-making processes limits our ability to explain why an AI tool recommended certain phrasing or conclusions.
- Ethical and legal concerns loom large, especially when AI handles protected health information (PHI).
- Overreliance on automation may undermine critical thinking and the nuanced judgment required in medical writing.
A Multidisciplinary Review Exploring the Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Clinical Healthcare puts it plainly: “One of the major concerns with AI in healthcare is the lack of trust and transparency in the decision-making process.”
AI lacks human compassion. It can predict outcomes but cannot replicate empathy, cultural nuance, or the physician-patient bond that builds trust.
Data privacy and compliance
AI doesn’t eliminate our ethical responsibilities, so when using AI for sensitive health information, we must adhere to privacy laws like HIPAA in the US, POPIA in South Africa, and GDPR in the EU.
Using a HIPAA compliant solution, like Paubox, can help support:
- Confidential communication of AI-assisted summaries and medical content
- Audit trails for accountability in healthcare writing workflows
- Trust-building between providers, writers, and the people they serve
As the 2018 Verizon Protected Health Information Data Breach Report states, “Healthcare is the only industry in which internal actors are the biggest threat to an organization, with 58% of incidents involving insiders.”
Therefore, we must improve our security practices, especially as AI tools become more embedded in day-to-day operations.
Security, transparency, and trust
For AI to enhance healthcare communication, organizations must improve their internal practices:
Security and compliance integration
Anyone, including medical writers, who handles PHI must adhere to HIPAA regulations. Therefore, AI-generated content should be reviewed and delivered using secure solutions like Paubox to prevent data breaches.
Transparent use of patient data
Patients must know how their data is used, how it’s protected, and what AI tools may be involved. If there is a PHI breach or misuse, HIPAA-covered entities must promptly notify the affected individuals and, in some cases, the media.
Ethical responsibility
Medical writers, developers, and clinicians must uphold ethical principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, and patient autonomy throughout the content lifecycle. AI tools can assist, but they should never replace human review, especially in emotionally sensitive or high-risk topics.
AI hallucinations, bias, and limitations
While AI tools are getting better at generating coherent, fact-like text, they are still prone to "hallucinations," which are convincing but false or misattributed statements. Writers should be alert to red flags like:
- Inaccurate references or fabricated citations
- Repetitive, generic phrasing (“In the digital era…”; “It is critical to ensure…”)
- Claims not backed by actual data or studies
To avoid this, they must cross-check AI-generated content with trusted sources. Medical content writing, particularly for regulated industries, demands a level of rigor and context that generative models can’t guarantee on their own.
AI doesn’t replace medical content writing
AI does not replace us as writers but rather changes how we work. It automates routine tasks, so we can focus on communicating with clarity, compassion, and ethical integrity. With this freedom also comes the responsibility of meeting regulatory requirements. Additionally, our writing must reflect diverse experiences and support the human relationships at the heart of healthcare.
