Why Your Clinical Practice Should Consider Releasing a White Paper
What is a White Paper?
A white paper is a scientific and analytical document produced by an organization or single author that provides research-based information and expert analysis on a solution, product, or service. We love a good conspiracy theory at Minola Scientific—read a bit about the origin of our namesake here)— rumor has it that the term “white paper” is of British origin and originally referred to official government reports (how exactly does one cite one’s mental bank of useless knowledge? I honestly have no idea if this origin story is real or not…). Alas, today, white papers generally seek to provide factual evidence supporting the superiority of a product or method as a solution to an existing problem.
While scientific journal articles are typically targeted at technical audiences and subject to the peer-review process, white papers are usually targeted toward external audiences outside the organization where the white paper originated. However, white papers differ from typical marketing materials because they lack the flashy clinical claims typically seen in a marketing brochure. Instead, white papers provide research-backed, informative, and persuasive content that solves a common problem, all in a digestible format for a general audience.
Why are White Papers Important for Medical Research and Related Industries?
While white papers exist in the technical and retail industries, they’re most seen in the medical field, especially the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. White papers contribute to knowledge distribution about a novel device or drug. Data about the product may be presented as charts, graphs, and tables and should be backed by reliable statistics. White papers also incorporate citations from peer-reviewed journal articles for data comparison and benchmarking. For this reason, white papers can be used to launch a new product or provide objective evidence for an existing one. They may also support a technical evaluation or educate cross-functional teams, such as sales and marketing.
What Makes a Good White Paper?
Successful white papers are well-supported with solid research methods. To provide reliable efficacy data on a novel or existing product, white papers must be supported with peer-reviewed citations to set the stage for how your product or service relates to the currently available treatment options and directions for future research. Any outcome measures should be appropriate, given industry standards and guidelines. Furthermore, any analytics should incorporate appropriate statistical methods given the generated dataset. Lastly, the research methods utilized should be well-documented and easily digestible.
Successful white papers incorporate attention-grabbing language. While white papers don’t have a clear sales pitch, it is essential to highlight why your product or service solves an existing clinical problem in desperate need of a better solution. This, in turn, spotlights the importance of your device or service and calls attention to its novelty, significance, or innovation.
Successful white papers are easy to read. In my doctoral program, someone on my dissertation committee told me a wild statistic that 86% of people can’t read most charts (again, I’m not sure how to cite one’s mental bank of useless knowledge that may or may not be accurate). I’m unsure if this is true, but alternatively, when building a figure or table into any clinical documentation, I ask myself if the chart or figure adds value that cannot already be deduced from the existing text. Moreover, I also like to ask myself, if a non-scientific person were to stumble across my documentation, would they be able to interpret it accurately? These are essential questions to ask when submitting a peer-reviewed publication or regulatory documentation since your reviewers can be individuals not previously familiar with your therapeutic area of focus or product type. However, these are fundamental questions to consider when writing documentation for general audiences, such as a white paper, since your audience is likely unfamiliar with your therapeutic area and probably does not have the same level of technical training as you and your colleagues.
White Paper Adjacent: The Case Study
Like white papers, case studies involve in-depth research better to understand a product or treatment's functionality or success. They can also describe a single or several examples of an unusual complication associated with a treatment method or disease. While case studies can be published in peer-reviewed journals, they may be posted on a company website, database, or registry. Moreover, while white papers focus on larger groups of patients, case studies typically focus on one or just a few patients.
A case study has several advantages over a white paper: it tends to be shorter yet more descriptive since it focuses on just one or a few individuals. Because of this, they allow for a more in-depth analysis of a single examination and are sometimes more likely to better speak to a product or technique’s viability. However, because of the small sample size, it is often harder to generalize from case studies like a white paper.
Key Takeaways
White papers can be a powerful modality for presenting research-based evidence about the efficacy of a novel or existing product or service. White papers can be used to launch a new product or support the robustness of an existing one. This can generate interest in your product or service provided by your clinical practice. Notably, writing a comprehensive and persuasive white paper requires the technical know-how about a device or therapeutic area and the skills to churn professional jargon into digestible information for a general audience.
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