AI's Influence on Medical Writing | Alex Evans, PharmD, MBA

Transcript Disclaimer: This transcript is generated using speech-to-text technology and contains multiple spelling errors and inaccuracies. It is only intended to capture the essence of the conversation.

[00:00:12] Mike Koelzer, Host: Alex, for those who haven't come across you online, introduce yourself and tell our listeners what we're talking about today.

[00:00:20] Alex Evans: My name's Alex Evans . I am a pharmacist In medical writing kind of as a freelancer now, and[00:00:27] with chat GPT kind of being the big ai, that got attention earlier this year, I started how it could be used. Does it work well?

How can you get better out of it? Things of that nature. So today we're gonna talk about the impacts of AI,[00:00:42] medical communications.

All right, Alex, you're living in Japan now. 

[00:00:47] Mike Koelzer, Host: and I've gotta ask, is that just like some marketing thing to say that you can go wherever you want to in the world with your writing?

And so you said I'll go to Japan [00:00:57] to really make an impact to see how far away I can go from the states.

[00:01:00] Alex Evans: it would not quite be like that.

going on? brings you to Japan?

I guess first of all, Japan's immigration's too tough to be able to do that. I don't think they I don't think you can get a visa [00:01:12] that easily here. Right now I'm about 20 or 30 minutes away from where my wife grew up.

 We were living in Jacksonville, Florida before this I was there for six years and due to Covid and, just expense and

things it had actually been four and a half [00:01:27] years since her family had seen my son. So

 We moved last summer. 

At that point my son was five and a half and his family here had seen him once.

For about a week, my wife stayed longer, so about

at that time. But

 [00:01:42] so it had been a very long time. He didn't speak Japanese. he didn't know who they were.

We initially planned on staying for two years, just to catch up on family time.

and I just do medical writing from here.

[00:01:57] And kind of realized pretty soon after getting here I wanted to stay.

 It's a great environment for my son. We, I certainly like living here

so we're settled now,

[00:02:07] Mike Koelzer, Host: Where did you meet your wife 

[00:02:08] Alex Evans: iN Hawaii.

[00:02:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: And she's Japanese.

[00:02:11] Alex Evans: [00:02:12] Yeah. Yeah. 

 For your writing. 

[00:02:15] Mike Koelzer, Host: Does it matter where you are or does it matter? Not at all.

[00:02:21] Alex Evans: And for work, for the most part, it doesn't matter

Doing a podcast like

Yeah, 

in the morning [00:02:27] here,

And so those podcasts, of course, you have to work out a good time for

But other than that, with the writing, actual writing of articles or even writing CE and things of that nature, it doesn't generally matter. [00:02:42] I mean, you just, you have a deadline and you have to meet the deadline

[00:02:44] Mike Koelzer, Host: And you're emailing back and forth and stuff.

[00:02:47] Alex Evans: Yeah. And I can't imagine, I mean, I've never had an editor expect a response in two hours.

You gotta

'em back.

[00:02:53] Mike Koelzer, Host: how about any pharmacy stuff in Japan? [00:02:57] Have you got your feet wet as far as any local pharmacy scene in the nation or anything? Or haven't you really delved into that too much? I don't know what I'm asking, but you know, like any association or anything like that.[00:03:12] 

[00:03:12] Alex Evans: Yeah not yet, just because I've still been focusing on the medical writing,

I have

certainly been interested in looking at the Japan Pharmaceutical Association.

aNd yeah I actually need to contact them. They require a [00:03:27] license number in order to be able to register. So I have to

them what, I'm a little bit of an exception here

Is

I join anyway, hang out with y'all anyway.

Other than that, I have looked at becoming a pharmacist here. It's very long. Process[00:03:42] 

fiRst of all, proving language proficiency at a level that I do not have yet

really practice pharmacy when patient

is at risk.

But I think at least with joining the pharmacy association, kind of stay involved and see what's happening in the country

bring [00:03:57] some ideas back and forth between

and us.

[00:04:00] Mike Koelzer, Host: Alright. Alex, the first time you saw a GPTA chat years ago, let's say, what's your first thought in the first 15 minutes of pulling this thing up and playing [00:04:12] with it?

[00:04:13] Alex Evans: Oh man, I was blown away. I remember the first prop I ever put in was, what is heart failure? And I posted on LinkedIn 'cause I just couldn't believe what it, what it came up with. I mean, just three, four paragraphs it started writing about, pathophysiology [00:04:27] and major drug classes for heart failure and outcomes.

I don't remember what it was producing, but I was blown away with it. And of course anything the, anytime you have a technology that's disruptive to so many things, there's gonna be[00:04:42] 

people that are in denial about how it's going to affect their job.

So I've had a lot of medical writers. push back and say, I'm not using ai, it's not accurate. pRefer the human touch, things of that nature. I'll also say [00:04:57] I've had a lot of private messages back and forth with

 who work for drug companies and

for medical communications firms.

They're

own private tools and already using them so it's just moving fast 

 [00:05:12] And a lot of people still seem to be under the impression that AI means that you would submit a first draft or you'd submit an output, or that things would slip through the cracks. You have to fact check it, you have [00:05:27] to adjust the style for the website or journal 

But, consumer health, even provider education, like it will crank some stuff out intros and conclusions can be pretty much boilerplate with web articles even[00:05:42] 

magazine articles. It'll just crank those out. You do some light editing. I mean, they save, I can write in half the time. And the other thing is that you end up often writing things that are more comprehensive in nature. It'll start writing things that you didn't think [00:05:57] of.

the side effect of a medication, if it's nausea

 start going into self-management tips for nausea.

[00:06:03] Mike Koelzer, Host: Alex playing devil's advocate. This comes out and Alex says well, there goes my customers because [00:06:12] they're all gonna use this. 

[00:06:14] Alex Evans: Uh, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of medical writers are afraid of that. not that it hasn't crossed my mind, I

 I don't see that necessarily that companies would [00:06:27] go with an, a raw output unedited

[00:06:31] Mike Koelzer, Host: That's a good point.

[00:06:32] Alex Evans: actually that and put themselves at that kind of risk.

And I'll also say for anybody who follows like search engine optimization 

and things of that nature, which [00:06:42] is part of a lot of medical writing.

has put out a lot of updates recently, and has started to focus a whole lot more on what's called EAT, which is essentially how much they can trust the content that's on your site.[00:06:57] 

That is influenced by a number of factors, but that includes health topics. It's considered kind of a high risk topic for Google because it could really affect somebody's life if it's inaccurate. They place a heavy emphasis on, [00:07:12] the credentials of the authors or the author bios there. And are they healthcare professionals?

I think there will always be a place for that, but it does allow you to write things in, let's say half the time, And prior to this, from [00:07:27] what I've seen, the demand for medical writers has been far greater the number of medical writers

 And there are a lot of people wanting to get into it but when I've had conversations with recruiters, the companies that we're recruiting for, they [00:07:42] want in a specific area, or 

say for example, they want know, somebody who's worked publications in cardiology or they want somebody who's, done a specific type of document

This kind of thing is in really short supply. So right now I [00:07:57] don't personally see the market collapsing, at least for a while with medical writing. 

[00:08:02] Mike Koelzer, Host: There was that attorney, this is like three months ago that attorney turned in something to the judge They cite cases and it had 80% of the cases [00:08:12] that were cited were fake. AI just made 'em up, they just do that.

They don't, it doesn't come back and ever say, we don't know. It just makes stuff up and adds to what you're saying about having to , check it and so on.

[00:08:25] Alex Evans: And I'll say that one of [00:08:27] the huge weaknesses that I've seen consistent with multiple AI writers is citing in the medical world, it's citing specific studies and it will just say, a meta-analysis. And JAMA said this and it had this many patients and that thing never [00:08:42] existed

[00:08:42] Mike Koelzer, Host: It never was there.

That's something, isn't it?

[00:08:46] Alex Evans: Yeah. And bank rate, I was on a call on a podcast that Peter Leland's in big, in med comms. We talked about bank rates for a while. Somebody mentioned that bank rate had [00:08:57] went heavily into AI and they mentioned that there were some factual errors and bank rate had to recall articles.

And it looks as far as I saw, it was centered around numbers. So it

The interest on $10,000 was $10,300 then [00:09:12] $300.

I would say that's as much of the fault as the editor as 

anything else. it's a tool like,

tHe pharmacy we have the same thing.

 you got barcodes scanning to fill the bottles, but you still gotta take

pills out of the right bottle. 

[00:09:25] Mike Koelzer, Host: You really have to have someone that's [00:09:27] going through it piece by piece to see if it's correct in that process.

[00:09:32] Alex Evans: Yeah. And actually I'm glad you brought that up 'cause it brings another huge point that I want to mention about these AI writers is that in order to even [00:09:42] Prompt the AI writer to produce the type of output you want. You have to have the knowledge that comes along with being a healthcare

or

a lot of life scientists who work in med comms too.

But you have to have some level of knowledge. If I'm [00:09:57] prompting it on diabetes, you can't just say, write about diabetes and expect it to produce what you want. So

saying, write about the pharmacotherapy for type two diabetes. Cite only ADA guidelines or

 [00:10:12] define diabetes according to AAC and ADA

metformin, GLP ones and SGLT twos, including their side effects of action. Now you're getting a really good prompt and it will give you that information,

 [00:10:27] 

[00:10:27] Alex Evans: but you think like a lay person would be very unlikely to produce that kind of output. And so medical communication firms, I think, are still going to need it. People with a healthcare life sciences background

to communicate with the [00:10:42] A.I. Writers, and that's where I think there's gonna be big job opportunities.

[00:10:46] Mike Koelzer, Host: You are absolutely right. That is a huge part of it. I mean, just a quick example like with my show here I might tell AI to produce a social media, just a paragraph, on the [00:10:57] upcoming show, and it makes a big difference if I say . Write this to pharmacists, this paragraph. Or if I say my show is based on conversation, it's more of a[00:11:12] late show you might see on tv.

 That kind of stuff makes a big difference. What comes out of it? One's talking about the feelings and the conversation and the ups and downs and something like that, and something else is coming out with statistics or, you'll learn this [00:11:27] if you do that well, it's not really a learning thing.

And so much of it is really what you put into it. of it is

[00:11:34] Alex Evans: Yeah, it absolutely is. That's the name of the game There are a variety of other writing tools, an instant article writer, which can be

[00:11:42] limited consumer health.

[00:11:43] Alex Evans: where you basically plug in the headersit 

the articles,

would not foresee being able to produce like AC with that. Chat writers and I actually have this, they can go to my YouTube channel, but I have [00:11:57] a demo where I actually made a chat writer produce a CE program. and it was actually the subject of diabetes. And the chat writer even created a table. It creates a table of major drug classes for diabetes. [00:12:12] Their side effects, and I think the effect on weight. There's some kind of prompt I used as an example like that it spit it out.

[00:12:21] Mike Koelzer, Host: And for our listeners that haven't dabbled in this much, I think what Alex and I [00:12:27] are getting at is so chat, GPT or whoever , the different ones. You can take a prompt and say, as simple as writing an article about diabetes, and if that's all your input you have, [00:12:42] it doesn't come out with a partial article.

It comes out with a full article, the beginning, the middle, the end. It looks like something you're gonna read in a magazine, but it may have no depth or it might have a lot of depth, but it's the wrong depth that you [00:12:57] need. You weren't going after that. But it's not like it warned you that this was a half-ass article.

It looks like a nice big article, but it might be down the wrong, 

[00:13:06] Alex Evans: Yeah, that's absolutely right. it also could be geared towards the wrong [00:13:12] audience. If you're writing for healthcare professionals, that's gonna be a different writing style than writing for consumers. You think about that and like the CE that I got it to produce. Prompt actually a page and a half long. I typed it up on a Word document first and [00:13:27] it's a page and a half long, and then you, I put it in the chat writer in sections. I I had to do it in three sections because it exceeded the character limit for the input. But still you have to know what AC looks like. You have to know what you wanna ask With diabetes, you have to know what [00:13:42] pharmacist would want to know about diabetes if you're producing AC and this one was a sample, it wasn't like AC that's, you can go out and see it completed with the AC company. thIs one was just kind of to demonstrate the writers but you have to have that [00:13:57] baseline level of knowledge. I just don't think you would be able to do it, to your point in mechanical engineering or if I'm writing a piece on aviation and. Some new technology with the Boeing or something.

I have no business writing about that. . 

[00:14:10] Mike Koelzer, Host: You have to know your [00:14:12] audience because for example, on this show, I might have a guest on, and they might be explaining for a few minutes and maybe they would go longer on. You know what the PBMs are or what [00:14:27] something is, and I always edit that stuff out or redirect the conversation because your listeners are gonna fall off after listening for a minute if you're hitting the basics of those things, 

same [00:14:42] with the writing, if you come in too high or too low for somebody you're missing that target and you're gonna drop off

[00:14:48] Alex Evans: Yeah, absolutely. That's an excellent point. Exactly a physician, you're writing AC for a physician, know, don't, don't drone own, about what [00:14:57] diabetes is or something.

You gotta, start getting to

[00:14:59] Mike Koelzer, Host: That's exactly right. One of my sons just graduated. He's in secondary education. He's an English teacher at a high school freshman, sophomore English teacher. It was interesting telling him about Chad GPT 'cause [00:15:12] that's like his, it'd almost be like me thinking how somebody else might respond in the medical writing who wasn't forward thinking.

And he's , I'm not gonna let this thing help me out. But thankfully they had an in-service kind of thing where they said, here's what [00:15:27] you should use it for, and things like that. And I told my son, I said, I think that's great.

It'd kind of be like . Maybe a pharmacist instead of physically cliche, instead of counting out the tablets, gives them time to [00:15:42] work with the patient. And I said that to my son, instead of you making out quizzes or having to decide this and that, let Chad GPT do it. And then you spend your time [00:15:57] comparing it to pharmacy with the patient, basically, who's your student.

And they need personal attention and looking into their work as human to human, that kind of stuff. But let the AI do all the [00:16:12] other stuff.

[00:16:12] Alex Evans: Yeah, I think that's an excellent point in the pharmacy world, it's just, I mean, we have filling robots,

they're too expensive unless you reach a certain volume that a pharmacy is. So it's always

decision. But if

the robot was [00:16:27] and didn't take any maintenance, everybody would have one.

 I mean in chat GPT, the technology is cheap. they're free trials for a lot of them. I use one that I get way more words than I ever use in a month. It's GOT four, four and a half Technologies, the latest [00:16:42] 

and it's $130 a year or something like that.

It's extremely inexpensive. And you can use it for medical, you can use it for other niches too. 

[00:16:53] Mike Koelzer, Host: I know that in chat GPT just what, a week or two [00:16:57] ago they opened up they're allowing documents and finally I was able to upload, 10, 15 pages, but when I was trying to do stuff for the podcast here with the transcript and that, it's the same thing you're talking about. You had to take 10 pages and then summarize [00:17:12] 'em, and then combine it and all that kind of crap.

[00:17:13] Alex Evans: Yeah. And actually the other tool that I use has another, there's a kind of another style of AI writing tools that I call user trained AI writers. And use Write, Sonic is the name of the [00:17:27] company. They have one called Bot Sonic. And essentially what you do is you feed it PDF documents and links and stuff like that. It digests them then you can start asking it questions about the documents.

for a brief time I worked on an NPJE [00:17:42] review course

and it was great for that. So I took Bot Sonic, I fed it all of the South Carolina state laws. Then I started asking questions, to help me find things.

 I still had to write the question.

but [00:17:57] what it did was it kept me from having to sort through all those laws so, a controlled prescription good for in South Carolina? It'll give me the answer, but it'll also tell me where it is in that huge stack of papers.

Just kind of go right to it., 

[00:18:11] Mike Koelzer, Host: In my neighborhood. We [00:18:12] have about 20 houses and we're part of a, they call it a site condo. We don't have identical houses and nobody does our yard and that kind of stuff. It's just that the city doesn't pay for our roads, so we have to . [00:18:27] Combine our funds and fees and pay for our road and stuff like that.

Anyways, we're attached to another homeowners association down the road, and there are a bunch of old farts who, they're all retired, but they're trying to relive [00:18:42] their attorney days, you know, and that kind of stuff. So something minor comes up and they're like threatening to sue us on stuff, And so I'm the president of our association and we had some, just some tiny issue, but like [00:18:57] I say, they all pull out their quill pens and stuff, and they want to get into it. I took their emails back and forth, and I took some emails that part of our board sent and all that.

I just loaded 'em all up into uh, I don't know, I think it was anthropic, but one of the AI [00:19:12] engines. And I loaded it all up and I said and I just didn't say, what should I do? But basically I said, calm this down. Make it politically correct and hear from both sides. But ultimately, here's what I wanna say.

[00:19:27] And I threw it in there, and came out with this lovely letter. I would've spent days on that before, not making it for days, but reading it, seeing if it was the right tone, all that kind of stuff. And it saved me a lot [00:19:42] of angst. You also know that . You're not too far off the deep end. In other words, that's what they say about marriage. It's like usual in a marriage, both people are kind of crazy, but two people [00:19:57] make up one sane person. So that's with this thing, it's like I might be in a pissy mood or something and I might be defensive and all that, but if I throw it into one of these AI things, it kind of calms me down.

It [00:20:12] gives me trust in my response.

[00:20:13] Alex Evans: Yeah. And it, I mean, that's an excellent use case. 'cause it's just the kind of thing where it would excel at writing in an empathetic tone. 

A famous study found that uh, patients, thought that [00:20:27] chat, GPD was more empathetic than a human doctor with their responses. I'm sure you probably, at least, you at least read through the letter carefully. It's very likely you edited sections of

work. What's about that? Like 

[00:20:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:20:42] I've got this app I use for the pharmacy and it's a relatively new app, and so my input to this company, I don't know where the hell they are, but my input to them, they seem to respond pretty well. And sometimes you can see the program even tweak a little bit when you're a relatively new company

But [00:20:57] every time I send them something, it used to be Hey Monica, here's the issue. Thanks Mike. We'll check it out. Now. It's Monica and I say that in quotes 'cause it's Monica Monica's ai. Dear Mike, we hope all is well with you [00:21:12] and we can't thank you enough for bringing this to our attention.

And we understand that this and this and this is going on and we feel your pain. That this would be a lot of, you know, all this stuff. So it's given me all this AI baloney. So whenever I gotta find something on that now I'm either gonna drop down to [00:21:27] the third paragraph so I can get past all the politeness of the air.

[00:21:31] Alex Evans: Yeah. That's funny you mentioned that. I just yesterday recorded a brand new C that's gonna be coming out with the chief C on AI and medical writing. a live webinar. The first portion is [00:21:42] recorded and then you have the 10 minute q and a.

For the recording of the slides, I went to this plastic surgery clinic where they had user trained AI writers.

I mean, the thinks

fed it probably their policies and their prices and all this stuff.

then [00:21:57] you can ask it questions as an example. And I told the thing like, I'm interested in getting the wrinkles around my armpits tucked and it responds like, what would it mean to you if you got those wrinkles tucked,

[00:22:10] Mike Koelzer, Host: Hey, that's [00:22:12] none of your damn business. I just want my wrinkle.

[00:22:14] Alex Evans: yeah, I went on and I told her I could get my deodorant on so I don't stink And it said, please tell me more. I mean, it's like trying to be a therapist there on the customer service chat box,

[00:22:26] Mike Koelzer, Host: [00:22:27] 

[00:22:27] Alex Evans: It's like everybody knows you're talking to a robot.

[00:22:29] Mike Koelzer, Host: Exactly. something on, where did I hear that last week? I forget what it was, but This guy was talking to someone at the company, at the help desk, he would say something and this robot would kind of laugh, [00:22:42] making it sound like a human's laugh, and then he would say something else. And pretty soon he said to her, he said, is this a human? And she said something like, uh. we wouldn't want it any other way or some like vague answer, something like [00:22:57] that. And then he came out and he said, tell me you're not a robot. And she kept beating around the bush.

So apparently that was one thing programmed into it that it'll never admit it's a robot. But then it was just funny how often he went back to ask if [00:23:12] it was a robot. 

[00:23:12] Alex Evans: Wow. That robot's ready to run for Congress.

[00:23:15] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah, exactly. Alex, do you see besides the stuff we were talking about, that side of it. If done correctly, do you only [00:23:27] see benefits to the consumers of this stuff? I mean, we talked about some of the things you have to be careful of, but do you think here's an example? beFore when you maybe had some people, let's say, tweeting [00:23:42] some thoughts, now it gives someone the ability to be a thespian and write out these, long blogs and pretty soon you've got like blogs, all over the place, which used to be, 140 character [00:23:57] tweets or something like that.

Do you see anything bad coming from this as far as info overload and, I know we already talked about things that are wrong and stuff like that. Do you see the consumer getting hurt as the receiving end of this?

[00:24:10] Alex Evans: I definitely see [00:24:12] that's possible. the main thing that I see, at least with websites, At some point probably narrows the focus to some extent 'cause there's so many AI tools out there. But with the writers and the websites, it's become easier than ever to start a website and produce just [00:24:27] boatloads of content really quickly.

their case studies, even this year actually I, to Niche Pursuits podcast, which is a pretty popular podcast for people who work on websites and things

And they actually just had a case study from somebody who grew a [00:24:42] website from zero to $15,000 a month, and started it in January of this year. Now that individual did edit all of the AI articles, so they were really

on quality. But seen other cases where [00:24:57] just writes Sonic, for example. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, they have the tool available. Again, it's up to you to use it, but

a one click publish button and it integrates with your WordPress account, which for those

is a website, [00:25:12] the most popular website builder. integrates with your WordPress account, and you can click a button from Right Sonic, and you could publish it directly to your WordPress account without even going into WordPress. You could do some light editing within Write Sonic. You could also [00:25:27] just hit publish. The one that the individual who's now making 15,000 a month set he used was Koala Writer. And with that one, you schedule topics you can pull in like queries on an Excel spreadsheet. For [00:25:42] example, best hotels in Austin, Texas would

query. And then

have people competing over that search term, so you

bunches of search queries, it'll write articles and publish them automatically to your blog. [00:25:57] So you could just, you buy the membership, you could just have it just cranking out raw

[00:26:03] Alex Evans: The name of the game is like writing bigger and badder than the Min X guy.

So that you rank top on Google and then you get all the traffic.[00:26:12] So they could take those search queries. They could go into a popular search engine, like the tools you use to, to check those search queries. They could find

topics they want. They could upload them in an Excel spreadsheet to Koala writers. [00:26:27] I'm just using that as an example. I'm sure there's plenty others

that could do

 with a paid membership with Koala writers, you could have it just. Basically write content while you sleep and it just publishes it automatically to your WordPress account. anD [00:26:42] you've never even seen the article. That is possible. earlier this year, I think Google has gotten more gone, more and more heavy with, with updates on cracking down on it and is going to continue to crack down on it, but just raw [00:26:57] unedited AI content that's not checked at all and just producing like 300 of 'em a month or something. They were ranking in Google.

They were getting tons of traffic. They were making money, but it was, I don't wanna say it's garbage because [00:27:12] I've seen what the ai writers can do,

You don't know that it's accurate. You're writing about the best printers for something you know best. 

I was gonna mention the Verge.

 they got a lot of, uh. attention recently an article really really talking about how people [00:27:27] who work in these websites have ruined the internet. Soon afterwards um, somebody surfaced an article from The Verge. If you search Best printers for 2023, rank in on the first page of Google for an article on that. [00:27:42] And they unabashedly say it's written by Chad GPT, and

just total garbage.

don't know if they did it as a case point to show that they could rank because of how, authoritative their website is, but

total trash and it just [00:27:57] said something like, Hey man, buy this brother printer. And then it's just jargon. Like it's, it had to have been an old version of Jet GPT 'cause it's worse than what these AI writers could even produce today. And it's gonna become [00:28:12] even more important to have content reviewers, I think, in all niches. no matter what niche your website is in, to have people who really have experience in it, to have their name

to have

on the website, to have their bio. Like these [00:28:27] kind of things that build reader trust are going to become more and more 

did a huge reshuffle actually just a few weeks ago and started ranking forums really highly when they weren't ranking [00:28:42] before. like you type in best hotels in Austin or whatever, a lot of search queries like that, you'd start getting Reddit as ranking as

one now, and that's a huge change from the past.

Now, Google may dial that back in [00:28:57] future updates, but I think what

to get at is that Reddit as an example, I'm not saying it's a gold standard, but people

paid to produce the

they're writing it out of. It's creative, it's like a commons. 

So [00:29:12] giving recommendations that they truly feel they like, that they would recommend to a friend. I mean, 

 there's no motivation to spam Reddit. There's no financial motivation, so.

[00:29:22] Mike Koelzer, Host: On Reddit, You could easily copy the text on that page of the first of the [00:29:27] answers to the first 30 responses. Throw it into chat, GPT, come out with an AI answer, but. That would still be for personal involvement. 'cause like you say, is there not a financial involvement in that?

So at least[00:29:42] why would you have AI so involved if there's not gonna be remuneration for it 

kind

[00:29:48] Alex Evans: Yeah, exactly. And then you'd have a lot of other folks on the forum saying, hey, the hotel sucks. Don't go there, or whatever. Like in the

Austin example, [00:29:57] you'd have a lot of people on a Reddit forum kind of

and saying why are you recommending such an awful

disagreements

best ones as you always would, but a truly

 would get

out in the forums. So yeah, Google has started [00:30:12] ranking that more.

 They've kind of taken health and finance or two topics they've kind of taken separately.

[00:30:18] Alex Evans: They call it your money, your life, they're kind of nicknamed for it, topics where inaccurate information could really hurt you. Those [00:30:27] topics become extremely hard to rank for. So yeah, if you Google best medications for heart failure, you shouldn't. I mean, I haven't Googled it, but you should not get Reddit. I don't think you're gonna get Reddit as number one. You're gonna get like [00:30:42] Clinic, Harvard Health, Things of that

[00:30:45] Mike Koelzer, Host: The medical one will kind of use some name brand medical ones to kind of fight ai.

[00:30:52] Alex Evans: Yes, they will. Is

brand being like how trusted their website is, and then [00:30:57] also authors, so that shows how trustworthy the authors are. Are they doctors talking about heart failure?

dO you have any bios of the authors at all? Things

It's similar. I think YouTube now has a verified healthcare professional[00:31:12] 

oR something like that for YouTube and they can

license and then get that to set themselves apart.

So Google is ranking things like that. 

[00:31:21] Mike: We've been talking about writing, but I saw online. Someone had put up a, at [00:31:27] least an audio of Joe Rogan, about an hour podcast with a, I think it was an 

imaginary guest. 

[00:31:34] Alex Evans: Whoa. 

[00:31:35] Mike Koelzer, Host: But it wasn't, I don't think it was good.

You could tell it wasn't

quite there as [00:31:42] far as interaction, humor, empathy, that kind of thing. bUt I always think about it like all of them . Commodities in the world. And people say that drugs are a commodity. And you can even go as far as [00:31:57] say, with ai that medical stuff can be a commodity and all kinds of commodity and even, animation and art and movies and all that kind of stuff.

I'm trying to think if I can gain attention of the market [00:32:12] from something that can't be duplicated, I don't know what the hell I would do with it. But it's just an interesting thing to me. You start thinking about all the stuff that can be duplicated. Even like, actors now Marlon Brando's family can [00:32:27] sell his likeness and there'd probably be a movie in three years with him as the main actor So it's just interesting of tHings that can be duplicated in my mind is thinking well, what can't be duplicated? And that's kind of the stuff that I would focus on. 

,

[00:32:38] Alex Evans: I feel like that's gonna become harder and harder. [00:32:42] now. Images that the deep fakes, gotten to the point where even images are going to have pedigree. It's like it's a Monet or something like that, 

but a snapshot I certainly worry about disinformation and, and social [00:32:57] instability due to that. Not just within

I mean globally. From being able to produce mass. Like you could create, could go right now and buy a domain on GoDaddy and I could produce massive amounts of air.

I could have it pull in feeds from other [00:33:12] kinds of channels that would be disinformation. I could automatically pull in news stories that I could create deep fake images and makeup stuff. And it'd almost be like an onion, right? Except it'd be scary. 

[00:33:25] Mike Koelzer, Host: And think about it, Alex, [00:33:27] anything can be fake because you'd have the current president. Saying something, fake, deep fake, and then you say yeah, but I'm only gonna watch that on NBC news tonight. It's really?

How often do you sit [00:33:42] down and watch tv? You might get it off a video with I don't know, Diane Sawyer. I know Barbara Walters has passed away. I think Diane Sawyer is still alive. But, I can watch a video with one of the popular [00:33:57] newscasters, but of course that can be faked. And then

say, yeah but it came from a, b, c news.

 No, it didn't. That was faked. Maybe if the only thing I looked at was things that I knew the feed was [00:34:12] from somewhere, or if I turned on my TV at six 30 at night, and I know I'm watching one of the main newscasts, but I don't even have a TV service. I mean, that's how little people are watching things, that they know where it's from.

[00:34:26] Alex Evans: Yeah, I agree. [00:34:27] And I think a lot of people are consuming nearly solely from social media. I've seen surveys on in the past, I forget

I don't know, one in four or something are getting all of news to kind of go down that route from social

And, of course [00:34:42] you can't, verify on social media. I mean, Some social media platforms are better than others, but even if it's only to cover their own butt, they all attempt to like moderate

to some extent, as far as I know of. But by

it's gotta go [00:34:57] up before it can be taken down. And by then people have seen it.

They could record it, they could share it, they could record it for themselves, you save it on their own computer. So I agree that the information side of things is going to be one of the threats [00:35:12] potentially. 

[00:35:15] Mike Koelzer, Host: Alex, You do this, but I also know you teach this and it's interesting to hear that you say there's so much more [00:35:27] writing available than there are writers.

[00:35:31] Alex Evans: That's been my impression of the situation for quite a while. A really tough thing is just getting into writing because you've got the healthcare professional [00:35:42] background, but little to no writing experience within the medical writing world, it's tough when you first. Get started. if I wanted to do a new kind of writing, like a kind of writing, I just have no experience in, I would face the same thing. Like [00:35:57] most of my stuff has been web articles, ce, I've done a little bit of pharma and a few things here and there. But say regulatory writing is something I've never done submitting documents to the FDA or any other regulatory agencies. I'd have to put [00:36:12] in a lot of applications . But at the same time, they're desperate for regulatory writers, but they need somebody who can

job. I think with AI, the prompt engineering people who can effectively prompt is going to be a huge need.

And I don't think the demand is gonna be [00:36:27] met for a while.

[00:36:29] Mike Koelzer, Host: I imagine with your writing, while you tell me, I would imagine that your name is out there, so some people might come to you because of that. And also [00:36:42] if you go to someone, you've got examples of who you wrote for and all that gives you credence.

[00:36:49] Alex Evans: Yeah I've, I've had both happen. So I do have a portfolio where I can link out to articles and things that I've written. I've been [00:36:57] able to show that to companies that I have been able to get work with.

had companies kind of reach out to me later. Sometimes it's the mass mail, sales navigator mails or whatever.

then other times it's actually been opportunities [00:37:12] that have worked out.

.

[00:37:13] Mike Koelzer, Host: Alex, take me through the class as to what has significantly changed since AI came out? Because I know you've had this program before. Is this [00:37:27] piggybacking or is it basically a revamped version? program because so much has changed and now it is AI focused.

[00:37:37] Alex Evans: Yeah, so the previous course is still up and it's still available through [00:37:42] and that's focused really on breaking into the medical writing field. did add a couple sample lectures from ai. I have some things on just the general writing process, on finding work. Where do you even find ads [00:37:57] for medical writing jobs?

then on getting the work, pitching editors things of that nature. Building a portfolio. It's really focused on moving from healthcare professional or life scientists into the medical writing [00:38:12] field. This new course is focused specifically on AI. Aspect of medical writing. And within the course, of course cover the basics headers and intros and conclusions and things of that nature, [00:38:27] then dig a lot into doing use cases.

So we write like clinical trial summaries, we write continuing education. We write web articles for both consumers and providers. I get into a little bit of medical editing 'cause I also do some of that and [00:38:42] get into a little bit of how you could possibly use AI for medical editing. We also look at it for how to use it to find a job.

So I have a YouTube

I put it up as a sample video on my YouTube channel, to help you find medical writing [00:38:57] work. So I just asked the prompt like, find me 15 companies producing. Continuing education for pharmacists or find me 10 medical communications companies that hire in the US, something like that.

And it'll just kick 'em [00:39:12] out and then you can go to their websites and see what kind of jobs they currently have available. so we use, we do a variety of things like that, using it to help you write a cover letter. it's all focused on AI and it's taught nearly a hundred percent from my [00:39:27] screen, so that way you can see exactly what's going into the, all of the input, whether it's into the

writer, article writer, or what,

You can see exactly what I'm doing to produce that. 

[00:39:38] Mike Koelzer, Host: Is your face on this at all? Or just the screen?

[00:39:40] Alex Evans: Yeah. But unfortunately [00:39:42] is not on the screen.

[00:39:43] Mike Koelzer, Host: No

so you're showing the screen and then you're showing yourself talking sometime

[00:39:47] Alex Evans: Yeah. And then I've also got some downloadable resources where, like after the lecture, I think I mentioned the prompt is for continuing education, which I used as a [00:39:57] page and a half. So that's a downloadable 

thing. on a Word document, they can check it out, and

That can be a template to be used if you're doing a CE for heart failure.

You could still use that as a template to get your ideas [00:40:12] going for how to produce a good prompt for a heart failure

ce.

For your students, let's say.

[00:40:18] Mike Koelzer, Host: What's gonna separate failure from success with this? And I guess that's however you [00:40:27] define it. Some people might define success as, how much. Income, is it reproducing or how much attention is it getting? Whatever. But what's gonna separate those two, Alex?

Is it your salesmanship to sell yourself? Is [00:40:42] your skill? Is it your tenacity? Is it follow up and resell? What separates success from lack of success

[00:40:53] Alex Evans: 

For breaking into medical writing, I honestly think that [00:40:57] the biggest thing is the people who just keep going. when I first got into it, it was, by accident. I was just doing it as a hobby. I got lucky with the pitch to drug topics and they took it and I was just making 200 a month or something like that.

But then [00:41:12] when I moved from wanting to do that to wanting to make. Money that potentially replaces some of the pharmacist income at that point. It's just sticking with it, like just putting in application after application and [00:41:27] never hearing anything back and getting interviewed and never hearing anything back. And, eventually you start hearing at least I, I started hearing some yeses from some people. And then you just do the best work you [00:41:42] possibly can and you follow up with them to see if they want more work so you can get more work out of the same And uh, and slowly it starts getting better.

But that first stage for me, it was really only six months between when I decided to do it and when I was able to go [00:41:57] part-time, move into a part-time role as a pharmacist. I don't know how many hundreds of applications and emails and things I sent during that time.

[00:42:05] Mike Koelzer, Host: I always tell my kids, until someone's heard from you three times, you [00:42:12] haven't really done what you need to do. And I, I use the example of the pharmacy. It's when I used to get applications in, let's say I put a college job out for an afternoon clerk, point of sale, whatever, [00:42:27] and I'd get, this is back in the day when kids still wanted to work.

Now nobody wants to work, but this is back in the day when kids still worked, pre covid and I'd get 10, 12 [00:42:42] applications in and I wouldn't do anything with them. Because I was overwhelmed with what came into me, number one. And number two is I thought, I want somebody who [00:42:57] wants this job. I want somebody who's not just , clicking the button for all these jobs.

So that's number two. And then number three was I want somebody who has tenacity, who has the push, [00:43:12] that kind of thing. So part of it was my laziness and not knowing which way to turn. But part of it is that third connection, they kinda rise to the top.

And so I imagine in your stuff too that, I know these guys probably could get sick of [00:43:27] it, but they might be getting hundreds of these things in. And think about if somebody does it a second time, like says, Hey, I sent this in on your application, but I wanted to send you a little note on LinkedIn too, blah, blah, blah.

And then follow up a week later. [00:43:42] I have no idea, but I imagine that's pretty huge.

[00:43:44] Alex Evans: Yeah, I would imagine with many recruiters or folks in the hiring field of large companies, I imagine that would work well.

[00:43:52] Mike Koelzer, Host: Would that be good advice for, For someone trying to get something published and so on, or [00:43:57] would you just be a pain in the ass to the editor doing that?

[00:44:00] Alex Evans: I think if you're applying to a career, like a full-time medical writing job, that would work. But the other way to kind of get in with medical writing is you either go to the careers page where they're [00:44:12] actually looking for somebody and you hire and things of that nature. other path is going, the kind of posting and contributor page where you know, they hire, know that they bring people to write guest articles on,

[00:44:27] and

really an employee.

They're paying per article. And you get in that way. And at that

if you pitch the editor, most editors say they, they like a follow up after about a week or so because

inundated with pitches.[00:44:42] 

So even there, I think following up, probably after one time, if you still don't hear back at that point, should probably move on to a different journal or something, a different website.

But, I think for the pitching, that makes sense. But even the pitching, if you're gonna pitch [00:44:57] an article, you may still have to pitch it to a few places in

to kind of find somewhere that's willing to work with you if you don't have any experience. And I think when you don't have experience with writing then a really great place to focus [00:45:12] is on your specialty.

Hey, I'm a community pharmacist. I'm interested in Pharmacy services and I wanna write

on, pharmacogenomics and the

pharmacy, something like that. You're really focusing on that. Or I work in oncology [00:45:27] and I don't have medical writing experience, but I'm board certified in oncology.

I've been doing it for five

and,

At Mayo or something. And then actually that website is building the trust because they put your bio up, it benefits you ' you [00:45:42] get something for your portfolio to show people

And

build the trust with the search engines and with, of course with readers, which is equally important.

[00:45:51] Mike Koelzer, Host: My daughter's boyfriend, he quit his teaching job and he is [00:45:57] a sports article writer of current not reporting, but current things that are happening.

The Olympics are coming out, girls' volleyball, men's basketball, that kind of thing. And then on their website, [00:46:12] they will advertise sports betting companies on the website. And so the purpose of his articles is . Basically SEO for them, and then they make money by people clicking on this.[00:46:27] 

So a writer might I'm just guessing this, A writer might say who wants to know this? it's not necessarily new, it's not groundbreaking. It's not research, but there's a lot of reasons in this whole cycle, this whole business of this [00:46:42] that they need this stuff where I imagine,

[00:46:44] Alex Evans: yeah. There's, a lot of reasons for that. And in the consumer health world, it could just be googling things like whatever is going on. with you or side effects of a drug what to expect when taking a medication.

all of that stuff is publicly [00:46:57] available information. It's

on before, but they're competing for that traffic. And the thing to keep in mind is these, this is not journalism. It's a different kind of writing. We're not writing for the Atlantic, or we're doing, deep undercover [00:47:12] stories 

whatnot. And really,

[00:47:14] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. Right, 

[00:47:15] Alex Evans: we're not uncovering the Watergate scandal here.

We're just writing about Paxil. 

[00:47:20] Mike Koelzer, Host: And sometimes maybe the information's not new, but you're relating it to something [00:47:27] that is kind of new. Winter Olympics are here again, and here's a reminder of this or that. You're just kind of tying it into some stuff.

It's just new and even if not newsworthy, it's at least eye candy worthy.

[00:47:40] Alex Evans: your like trip advisors [00:47:42] and things like that. They're gonna be writing

wHere to go, where to stay this Christmas holiday season to see the

where, where to see Santa in Tennessee or something like that, and all of those topics are being pulled from [00:47:57] these keyword research tools. And in the health niche, the same thing. Like I write for its public information, but I write for GoodRx and they have a whole SEO department and they're pulling these topics from wherever [00:48:12] they pull 'em. They've got their tools they subscribe to, 

and the topics and that outlines and your job is to fill it out.

[00:48:19] Mike Koelzer, Host: And it is tempting. I'll wake up in the morning and before I go for a walk. I'll sit there with coffee and I'll flip through my phone, not [00:48:27] the news, but maybe the, I'm on a pixel and you go to the left and it gives you news, but more personal advice, news categories you like and so on.

And sure enough, I'll pull one up and it'll say, Eight ways to [00:48:42] do this, and I find myself opening 'em up. It's like, what the hell are they gonna tell me that I haven't been through a million times already? But it's just click bait, sort of. You just have to see like, have I nailed all eight of those or am I gonna find one thing [00:48:57] new and you don't?

And I could even write the damn article myself. I could go and type it into open AI and say eight ways to make me whatever. But you gotta see what people are saying. Everything's new and you gotta see if there's something out there to improve you [00:49:12] and so on.

[00:49:13] Alex Evans: Yeah, and listicles perform really well for that reason. And oddly

it's really funny but actually odd numbered listicles have a higher click through rate than even numbered listicles.[00:49:27] 

Seven things to do this winter is going to get clicked on more than eight things to do this winter and nobody knows why. So tend to have more odd numbers. The formula is an odd number plus [00:49:42] the search term. Plus, depending on the topic, the year, so that way you can validate that it's up to date. So seven

hotels. A superlative is after the odd words. So seven best, seven top Great. Seven [00:49:57] top hotels to stay in Austin,

for 

[00:50:03] Alex Evans: It's a formula. You can go on to like your favorite website now that has clickbait and you'll see the formula 

[00:50:08] Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah, 

[00:50:09] Alex Evans: to Eat Barbecue in North [00:50:12] Carolina.

[00:50:13] Mike Koelzer, Host: Of course I'm gonna have to put this on our show now too, I just can't say here's a talk with Alex. I gotta say it's the, 

Five ways to do this or something that odd is interesting. It must be an odd one out.

 I know six or eight or four of 'em, but it's that odd [00:50:27] one that I think is gonna be my ticket to success 

[00:50:29] Alex Evans: Yeah. It's funny. I don't know why but people 

[00:50:32] Mike Koelzer, Host: That's funny. So Alex, what are people interested in doing?

They're gonna click on your link and see these courses and just kinda [00:50:42] think if they might want to . Dip their feet into this and click on some of your stuff.

[00:50:48] Alex Evans: Yeah. i like to include a link to the free ebook I have that has the three top tips, [00:50:57] For getting started with AI writers.

[00:51:00] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. 

[00:51:02] Alex Evans: Just go in there, enter your email, I'll send you the ebook. and it's got a lot of like raw outputs examples of how to get started with refining the prompts you [00:51:12] can get better output than typing in what is heart failure. And got a list of writers in that book. eight or 10 of so you can see some different examples. up for some free trials and start playing around with it. I think that's one of the best [00:51:27] ways to learn 

[00:51:29] Mike Koelzer, Host: Alex, boy, thank you for joining us on the way from Japan. And I hope your day goes well.

Now you get some breakfast for yourself, but The attitude's cool and it's the same attitude that we need as pharmacists. [00:51:42] Until cancer is solved and until everybody lives to be a hundred, there's a need out there for people. You have to find the need and not be afraid of what's happening with A.I.

 Use the tools that are there and until [00:51:57] everything's been solved until that's happened, use the tools and let's all take a step up I think it's a great attitude you have, and I know it's true, but also it's it's a great thing to hear.

[00:52:08] Alex Evans: Thank you. Enjoyed being on the show and like I said, the [00:52:12] most important thing with the AI is to just get started,

The skills. If you're interested in medical writing, I absolutely think that learning to work with AI writers is going to be the future. So yeah, take it as an opportunity.

[00:52:24] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. Alright, Alex, nice talking to you. We'll talk again soon.[00:52:27] 

[00:52:27] Alex Evans: All right. Thank you.