What about Azur Health Science?

Hi! I’m Malorie and studying for a bachelor’s degree in foreign languages option technical and scientific translation in Mulhouse. As part of my final year, I needed to do an internship. I contacted Azur Health Science, even though translation is not their main profession. They didn’t hesitate for long before accepting me and for that I can’t thank them enough.

During my two-and-a-half-month internship at Azur Health Science my work was tailor-made for me. I was in charge of translating several types of documents such as blog posts, technical documents, administrative documents and others. The documents I translated from English to French were proofread by Coralie, the only French person in the company, and the documents from French to English were proofread by Sarah. These French to English documents required a lot of adaptation to make my French touch stand out as little as possible in my English version. Thanks to this internship, I think we all learned from each other, because translation is not as easy as it seems.

While I do technical translation (ENG/FRA), the bread and butter at Azur Health Science is regulatory medical writing.

Let’s talk about what a regulatory medical writer does. In pharmaceutical and biotech industries there is a job that is just as important as researchers and doctors, the job of a regulatory medical writer. A medical writer is first and foremost a communicator within the industries that they work for, they write all documents from protocols and clinical study reports to submissions, regulatory responses, and post-marketing studies; they cover all the regulatory requirements of medical writing, helping to create upstream documents compliant with electronic Common Technical Document (eCTD) standards, and to maximize work organization.

But a medical writer does not only write, they advise if some points are not clear or suitable, they carry out a quality control step in order to correspond perfectly to the typographic rules of each customer, and after a long work of drafting, resolution and checking they can finally send the deliverable. They work with product development teams, health communication agencies and directly with manufacturers.

However, not all their work is limited to the medical community confidentiality, some of their work is communicated to the general public, such as launch brochures, popular science articles and so on. It should also be pointed out that English is the only working language. Finally, this profession can be carried out within certain departments of large companies, but it can also be carried out, as it’s the case with Azur Health Science, in a private company.

Let’s go way back and look at the origin story of Azur Health Science and their founders. The Tilly’s are from the south England, and living there, decided to move to France. Despite the fact that the Tilly couple are co-founders of the company, Azur Health Science is, to quote Adrian, “Sarah’s baby” so for the moment we will only talk about her.

In 2006, Sarah Tilly took her first job as a regulatory medical writer in Glasgow and then in Edinburgh. After several years the they decided to move to Fréjus (south of France), in 2012 where Sarah started working for another medical writing company. Adrian also did some freelance work at this time, including proofreading for this company.

In 2017 came the beginning of the Azur Health Science story. Sarah left her previous company to start her own and Adrian also joined the company’s creation. They initially carried out their activity as part of a business cooperative, Boreal Innovation. In 2020, they left the cooperative and set up Azur Health Science as a limited company with headquarters established in Saint-Amarin.

The Tilly’s now formed a life and work partnership, and the adventure began for real. Azur Health Science has therefore been established on the market as its own entity for a little more than two years and the company continues to grow. Today Sarah is training at HEC Lausanne in parallel to her role at Azur, doing an executive MBA with a specilaisation in healthcare management, to develop effective management strategies and lead their implementation, leverage key management concepts and tools to strengthen the excellence of her organization, learn and apply the latest leadership principles, improving her soft skills and abilities as well as rethinking entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship to generate new business opportunities. This MBA will also help her in her Sarah Tilly mentoring program. After 17 years of regulatory medical writing Sarah is now the new vice president of EMWA (the European Medical Writing Association).

Photo by Mark McGregor on Unsplash

The two words mainly used to talk about the company are teamship and Ubuntu. The company’s philosophy is therefore based on success, relationships and spirit through professionalism, commitment, risk-taking, trust, integrity, respect, motivation, confidence, and loyalty. The directors are keen to be flexible on the demands of their employees so that everyone can respect a work/family balance.

The Azur Health Science team is now like a close-knit family. What you also need to know about this company is that no one takes credit for a project creation, because here it’s all about sharing and working together, and everyone is aware that alone the final work would not be the same. Speaking of my place within the company, I was immediately welcomed by the directors and the whole team as a full member of the company.

During my two-and-a-half-month internship at Azur Health Science my work was tailor-made for me. I was in charge of translating several types of documents such as blog posts, technical documents, administrative documents and others. The documents I translated from English to French were proofread by Coralie, the only French person in the company, and the documents from French to English were proofread by Sarah. The French to English documents required a lot of adaptation to make my French touch stand out as little as possible in my English version. Thanks to this internship, I think we all learned from each other, because translation is not as easy as it seems.

Today after a little more than two and a half year on the market Azur Health Science has 3 more members in the team and some are still coming. During my short passage in this company, I quickly understood that it is a great place to work they are professional and conscientious, but they also are supportive and understanding people. Something tells me that the adventure is far from the end!