Voice over narration for medical eLearning, presentations, videos, apps, and explainers is highly specialized. Artists who consistently work in this niche have often spent years honing their abilities and getting comfortable with medical terminology. Navigating your way through complex information confidently is imperative if you want to be a voice over for clinical trials.
This type of voiceover is so much more than possessing a nice tone. Narrating and performing medical content is also more than just having a dense vocabulary. It helps to either have a background in life sciences or a passion for it. Or, to have so much experience narrating it that you sound like you have medical knowledge.
Sometimes the content centers on the patient’s journey to better understand the disease and how a treatment or a drug may help. Sometimes the content is instructive, such as explaining procedures or how to operate the equipment. And sometimes, it focuses on clinical trials. This type of narration is the currency of the pharmaceutical world in terms of validating and getting approvals in the real world. Clinical trials are an essential concept and often an underappreciated one. They have had a lasting positive impact on the medical field and humanity in general.
Voiceover artists who are called upon to narrate material for clinical trials will encounter various projects, including:
Participant Facing Recruitment Videos
Includes explaining how a trial is to be conducted, procedure, risks involved, what the participants can expect, and how it is carried out. The recruitment video voice-over varies from clear and neutral to compassionate and reassuring depending on how it’s written and the underlying intent.
A quality clinical trial recruitment video can be the difference between patient recruitment failure and success. You have to establish a narrative and an emotional connection while being clear, articulate, and professional. It requires the ability to share information in a way that creates credibility and trust.
Voice Over for Clinical Trials Involving Research and Institutional Review Board Materials
Research and Institutional Review Boards (IRB’s) are critical stakeholders designated by the FDA and a vital part of the clinical trial process. Designed to explain obligations like informed consent, this material is often very technical and full of bureaucracy or legalese. The voice-over has to guide the listener through the jargon and separate the salient from the government-speak. Often producers who engage narrators will ask the talent to bring the material to life or infuse energy and purpose.
Pharmaceutical Sales Training
Before they can approach clinicians and HCPs (health care professionals) with information about a new drug, device, or indication, sales reps need to understand the data behind a clinical trial. Was it content that proved efficacy or noninferiority? And which clinical trials won which FDA approval for various indications?
The pharmaceutical industry is massive, but generating sales can be a tall order. It is becoming more imperative that sales representatives have all the information about a new drug at their disposal and understand it. Educated and informed sales reps are more likely to engender trust among HCPs as a voice of authority, increasing sales and brand recognition. Professional voice over for clinical trials designed to teach the reps is more likely to engage and increase information retention, leading to a higher ROI and better patient outcomes.
Conference Videos and CME (Continued Medical Education) for Doctors
Conference presentations, podcasts, webinars, and eLearning presentations that may or may not lead to certifications need expert voice over. These are just a few of the places where narration involving clinical trials, research, and outcomes will be applied.
Animations and Explainers
Animation and explainers effectively reduce wordy, lengthy, and often confusing documents down into something clear and accessible. Voice over is used for explaining the proposed MOA (mechanism of action) behind a drug or treatment protocol, describing cells or internal systems, or phases and findings of clinical trials. It also works well for demonstrating the importance of the trial in general. Because animations and explainers are so versatile and so much easier to distribute, they can be created to meet the needs of the intended target audience. Animation assets can be reused, and narration and voice over can be rewritten and recorded, adjusting to target needs.
Remote Collection of Data
Many people feel more comfortable discussing personal medical matters with voice technology than with an in-person professional. It is a quick and effective way of collecting ad-hoc data from clinical trial patients, and it also alleviates concerns around biases.
Voice Over for Clinical Trials Employee eLearning
Clinical trials are often complex, requiring high standards to pass scientific reviews and protect the trial’s integrity. As they can span years, clear, high-quality training is an invaluable resource for many employees. Data safety and sharing, informed consent, methodologies and protocols, clinical practice can all be developed into eLearning modules accessible to employees throughout the lifespan of one or many trials.
Sifting Through Scientific Notation Using Voice Over for Clinical Trials
Scientific notions are a part of the medical voice over where the narration experience or a medical background helps. Much of the language in clinical trials is similar to what we find in product inserts (or monographs) inside drug boxes. Scripts are full of CI’s (confidence intervals) and HI’s (hazard ratios) and P values, not to mention abbreviations like Mbq (megabecquerels) or MTX (methotrexate). The seasoned medical voiceover artist does not get thrown by drug names, anatomy, or scientific notation but speaks science like a native to the field.
There are so many exciting niche markets to choose from, and voice over for clinical trials is one of the most challenging. If you are interested in learning more about this genre or need coaching, give me a call!