EquityEdit: A New Business Model for CME?

July 18, 2007
Medical editing and writing is quite the growing field today, driven by the need for well written clinical documentation for FDA and other regulatory authorities, as well as industry-funded "continuing medical education" programs.  But at least one program breaks new ground, both in providing relevant part-time work for biomedical grad students and helping others.  Couldn't more agencies and more pharma companies adopt this approach for their CME efforts?  EquityEdit  enables graduate students and postdocs in science to earn income working as medical editors (already a "good deed" in itself, saving them from having to sling hash, bartend or wait tables). But then it takes a portion of that income and uses it to operate a clinic in Nepal. The organization was started by Duncan S. R. Maru, a M.D./Ph.D. student at Yale. Editors, who must be practicing research scientists, read biomedical articles written by Japanese scientists who aren't completely fluent in English writing.   ProEdit Japan, a for-profit company, provides compensation on a per-word basis, which amounts to about $30-60 per hour depending on the speed of the editor.  EquityEditors then donate anywhere from 0-100% of their compensation to Nyaya. Regardless of this percentage, ProEdit donates an additional 6-10% of the editors' compensation to Nyaya. Editors can edit as many or as few manuscripts as they like, typically between one every few months to ten a month.  Each manuscript takes about 1-4 hours. Learned about this company from a nice article  by Peter Fiske, "The Accidental Consultant," on consulting opportunities for graduate students and postdocs on Science Magazine's career forum.
Medical editing and writing is quite the growing field today, driven by the need for well written clinical documentation for FDA and other regulatory authorities, as well as industry-funded "continuing medical education" programs.  But at least one program breaks new ground, both in providing relevant part-time work for biomedical grad students and helping others.  Couldn't more agencies and more pharma companies adopt this approach for their CME efforts?  EquityEdit  enables graduate students and postdocs in science to earn income working as medical editors (already a "good deed" in itself, saving them from having to sling hash, bartend or wait tables). But then it takes a portion of that income and uses it to operate a clinic in Nepal. The organization was started by Duncan S. R. Maru, a M.D./Ph.D. student at Yale. Editors, who must be practicing research scientists, read biomedical articles written by Japanese scientists who aren't completely fluent in English writing.   ProEdit Japan, a for-profit company, provides compensation on a per-word basis, which amounts to about $30-60 per hour depending on the speed of the editor.  EquityEditors then donate anywhere from 0-100% of their compensation to Nyaya. Regardless of this percentage, ProEdit donates an additional 6-10% of the editors' compensation to Nyaya. Editors can edit as many or as few manuscripts as they like, typically between one every few months to ten a month.  Each manuscript takes about 1-4 hours. Learned about this company from a nice article  by Peter Fiske, "The Accidental Consultant," on consulting opportunities for graduate students and postdocs on Science Magazine's career forum.
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