How Transcriptions Can Benefit Your Biotech Research

In the biotech industry, three factors are crucial: precision, efficiency, and demand. Yes, biotech is largely influenced by the signs of the times, but these “signs” often come from your target demographic.

Thus, your next breakthrough depends primarily on accurate data, streamlined methodologies, and a clear sight of what your potential customers want. Anything less can lead to bumps in your research, and you may end up wasting time, energy, and resources.

This is why research transcriptions can be instrumental in succeeding in biotech. It gives you a firm grasp of the current demand, providing direction to your research.

You may have already conducted methodologies such as interviews and focus groups to gather critical qualitative data about your target research. However, it can take a while before you can utilize them, especially since you’ll often rely on audio recordings you have to sift through to extract the insights.

Enter biotech research transcriptions, a technique that makes your research data significantly easier and more convenient to leverage. Through this blog, we’ll teach you how you can use it to enhance your biotech research.

What is Biotech Research Transcription?

Biotech research transcription is the process of converting the dialogue in an audio or video recording (of interviews, focus groups, and other qualitative data methodologies) into text. The transcript (i.e., the resulting document) has key features that help scientists and researchers better leverage the text, such as:

• Type of transcription (e.g., full verbatim, smart verbatim, non-verbatim) for fitting specific research needs
• Timestamps for easier reference
• Speaker labeling to protect the PII of the speakers

Why Use Transcriptions for Your Biotech Research?

A 2022 Forbes article discussed some of the largest biotech industry trends of the year, which included scientific breakthroughs like artificial meat and personalized medicine. The most notable of these trends is that the processes for testing and approving new pharmaceutical drugs have become significantly faster, largely thanks to COVID-19.

This is great news for the common folk who want an improvement in healthcare quality. For biotech companies, however, this spells a demand for speed. Hitting the jackpot now means being able to come up with the next breakthrough ASAP. Of course, this speed must come without compromise. Accuracy is still paramount to ensuring that the final product works; otherwise, there can be fatal side effects for the consumers.

This is where biotech research transcription comes in. At first glance, it only seems like an extra step that unnecessarily adds more time to the research process. In practice, however, transcriptions can significantly streamline your workflow.

Benefits of Research Transcriptions in Biotech

Adding transcription to your workflow has numerous benefits for your research. Here are some key advantages of using transcripts:

Streamlines the research process

In your analysis, you may need clarification about certain data points. This can typically be solved by referring back to the source data (i.e., the audio recording).  However, it can be painstakingly time-consuming, especially when dealing with multiple audio recordings, even with tools like timestamps to ease the burden.

Transcripts can serve as reliable reference material in case of misinterpretation. You can simply look up a keyword or a phrase to immediately navigate to a critical insight. Plus, you can highlight and copy the text from the transcript and send it to your research group to clarify matters, allowing your team to proceed smoothly from a misunderstanding.

Gives better context and understanding of the discussion

One of the main advantages of using transcripts is that you can acquire more critical insights from the discussion. Here are a few ways how:

• Transcripts are a textual version of the discussion. This is already clear from the get-go, but it’s worth mentioning because it makes analysis much more convenient. In most cases, with audio recordings alone, you’ll need headphones and a quiet place to listen to the discussion. But with transcripts, you can analyze the discussion anywhere and even easily share vital portions among your colleagues for faster collaboration by simply copying and pasting the text.
• You can determine the type of transcription necessary. There are three types of transcriptions: smart verbatim, full verbatim, and non-verbatim. The type of transcription you choose for your audio recording may depend on your current research needs or preferences. Need the entire recording transcribed with coughs, laughs, and all? Then, full verbatim transcriptions may work best for you. Want to filter out some unnecessary utterances? Choose smart verbatim. Are you strapped for time and looking only for the main ideas? Non-verbatim will work.
• Speaker labels tell you who said what.  In large focus groups or interviews with low audio quality, it can be challenging to attribute specific dialogue to certain speakers in a recording. Transcripts solve this problem by offering speaker labeling, which correctly and cleanly matches each speaker to their dialogue.

In other words, transcripts give you a clearer perspective of the discussion. This is very important in the biotech industry, where precision and correct data interpretation is vital.

However, this assumes that you’re working with well-made, reliable transcripts. Transcription can take time and energy to make, and these two resources are often what scientists and researchers lack in the fast-paced world of biotech. Fortunately, there is a way to leverage transcripts without compromising research efficiency. With a transcription service like TranscriptionWing, you can focus completely on your findings and still get the transcripts that will take you one step closer to your research goals.

Increases the accessibility of your research in your organization

Even if you’re part of a smaller team of researchers engaging in a specific department, any critical qualitative data you acquire can significantly benefit your entire organization. Thus, it’s ideal that your biotech research is easily shareable. 

However, with how busy the other teams can be, they may lack time to listen to an audio recording. Fortunately, with transcripts, they’ll be able to tune into your critical insights as well.

Here are a few ways that biotech research transcription can make your research more accessible to your organization:

• Shareability. Text files are typically much smaller in file size than audio recordings, which makes sharing them more convenient with other team members.
• Video captions. Transcripts make captioning significantly quicker by making it easy to copy the text into a subtitle file.
• Readable content. If you have members in your organization who have difficulty understanding the dominant spoken language in the team, then having a transcription allows them to keep up and contribute at the same pace.  Additionally, you can have the transcript translated into the language they’re more comfortable speaking.

Helps plan future research

With biotech industry trends coming and going, it’s always best to have something to start from for your next pharmaceutical project. Starting from scratch can take a while before it yields results, so you usually rely on past materials to get a new project going.

This is what your biotech research transcripts can help with. They have reliable information on the needs and demands of your research.

Particularly, your transcripts may contain insights about:

• Past pharmaceutical products
• Competing brands
• Other biotech industry trends

How To Get Biotech Research Transcriptions

Convinced to use research transcriptions for your biotech research? Great! 

There are two ways you can get transcripts for your research:

1. Make them yourself

If you have some wiggle room in your schedule, you can do the transcription work yourself. Transcribing is fairly easy to learn and do.

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide on how to make your biotech research transcripts:

1. Schedule a time when you can have a long transcription session. Ideally, a session should last at least an hour. Remember to coordinate with your team members to find the best time when transcription will least likely be an obstacle to your research process.
2. Find a quiet, comfortable place where you can focus on transcribing the audio recording. Use a pair of noise-canceling headphones and find a cozy environment where you can stay for long periods of time.
3. On your computer, open the media player and text processor of your choice. Place the windows beside each other.
4. Play the audio and transcribe the dialogue. The transcription format should include the timestamp (ideally in an hour:minute:second format), speaker name, and dialogue text.
5. Once you finish transcribing the entire audio recording, replay the file and correct any errors during the playback.

Compared to your other tasks, transcription may be a simple task; however, it takes a remarkable amount of time and energy to do — so much so that it can be detrimental to the research process. Doing this though may lessen your research productivity, and tire you from doing the task.

How do you solve this problem? See the second way.

2. Use a transcription service

Instead of worrying about transcription work as an additional task on your to-do list, you can rely on a transcription service instead. You only have to send the audio recording and wait for the transcript to be delivered. If you have any format specifications, you can include them with the order and even request an expected turnaround time if you’re strapped for time.

All in all, utilizing biotech research transcriptions is significantly beneficial for your research projects, streamlining your workflow, and accelerating your research efforts for both the long and the short term. But to successfully leverage these benefits, you need to integrate transcriptions properly into your workflow. If adding transcription work to your to-do list is impractical, then you may always opt to have a third party do it for you.

Of course, you need to ensure that you can get your transcripts quickly and affordably without compromising the data security of your research. Thus, you should pick reliable biotech research or academic research transcription services like TranscriptionWing for transcripts made by expert transcribers that can meet your research needs.