What is a Medical Legal Review Process?
You may be well versed in the medical-legal review process or perhaps you've never even heard of it, but it forms an important part of the job for medical illustrators and animators. Here we'll discuss the collaborative role medical illustrators play in the review process and what questions you need to ask your content creators.
>> Insights from our Now Medical Studios team
Case Study
Read more about how we developed branded medical illustrations for medical-legal review for the Friedman Center.
What is a medical-legal review?
A medical-legal review (MLR) simply is the review process that all the content (from illustrations, to animations, and text) undergo prior to publication. It forms an important part of the content creation journey and is something medical illustrators know a lot about when it comes to helping their clients prepare for one.
The process usually involves the company commissioning the content and their team of legal specialists and medical content experts who undertake the review.
As medical illustrators, our role can vary depending upon the requirements of the brief set by the commissioning company—it can involve all aspects of content creation itself as well as packaging suitable reference materials used to create the visuals.
Why are MLRs so important?
MLRs are important checkpoints for content prior to being published and unleashed to the public. It can include a wide range of material; from training content to drug mechanism of action (MOA) animations, to patient or product information guides. In fact, any published material with medical or scientific content that is commissioned by a company can be subject to an MLR.
These are required to ensure that any scientific or medical information that is portrayed verbally, visually, or written is accurate and not misleading to the public. It is particularly relevant in the pharmaceutical industry where the promotion of any products need to be highly accurate and comply with regulations of not only the National Institute of healthcare and Excellence (NICE) and/or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but other regulatory bodies and stakeholders.
Media focused infographic, done in partnership with BioScience Communications.
When is an MLR carried out?
The short answer is: at anytime really, depending on the project. Ideally, some consideration should be given at the start of the project, during the planning stages, where internal reviews can be scheduled at each production milestone. This ensures that the science is accurate and the correct sources are being used to inform decisions along the way.
In some cases, it may not be obvious when an MLR should be carried out, in which case professional medical illustration studios can advise you on where MRLs can be scheduled for your project.
Case Study
Take a look at how we build detailed cranial nerve illustrations for our client KU Leuven.
What does a medical illustration company do to assist with MLRs?
Depending on your role within the process of preparing for one, whether you are part of the pharma company preparing an advertising campaign or part of the content production process, the tasks required will be different.
As medical illustrators, we need to be aware of the information that the med-legal review teams require. This information includes the references that we use to create our visuals, as everything needs to be traced and supported with scientific evidence.
This is not just limited to peer-reviewed scientific papers. If we are placing anatomy or depicting a surgical procedure, any measurements or equipment used will need reference data such as MRI or CT scans. At the molecular level, we may also reference protein structures from the Protein Data Bank or perhaps show intracellular detail that required high powered scanning electron microscopes to guide our illustrations and help us to build a 3D environment—these are some of the tools we use to understand the spatial relationships between organelles.
The MLR process can cost a lot of money. If a product such as an advertisement for a new drug is about to be launched, the commissioning client will no doubt have a legal team reviewing the material. This reduces the risk of litigation (a more extreme example if the content produced is not accurate or in any way misleading). Having steps in place to reduce the risk of money loss or damage to their reputation is an investment that many companies make. This is why agencies and companies choose to work with specialist medical illustration studios, reducing risk and making the process more efficient.
How we can help
The Now Medical Studios team are well versed in the MLR process. Consider partnering with us for your medical visuals and let's work together to create something amazing.
