In recent years, The BMJ has campaigned on transparency—the focus of our Open Data campaign, and an issue of vital importance if modern medicine is to retain the trust of doctors and the public, writes Trevor Jackson in this week’s Editor’s Choice. Dabigatran was the first of the new oral anticoagulants licensed to prevent stroke in […]
Category: Birte Twisselmann
The BMJ Today: Health challenges across the divide
Overdiagnosis and over-treatment of malaria is a major problem in South and central Asia, where malaria is a minority cause of febrile illness, and primary health centres often rely on clinical symptoms for a diagnosis. Researchers from London and Afghanistan conducted a patient randomised study in a primary care setting in two areas where malaria […]
Birte Twisselmann: European Union—live
As a three-times member of the national judging panel for the UK winner, I was invited to attend the awards ceremony for the EU Health Prize for Journalists 2013, at the European Commission in Brussels on 7-8 April 2014. And in the same way as last year, this meant an intense couple of days with […]
The BMJ Today: The Tamiflu trials
Today The BMJ is all about neuraminidase inhibitors and open data. Ten articles on the subject of anti-influenza drugs try to establish what we know. In sum: perhaps not enough to justify the huge expense governments worldwide have incurred in stockpiling these drugs, but perhaps enough in terms of improving transparency and providing researchers with […]
Birte Twisselmann on the HighWire Spring Publisher’s conference—massive, open, online, and individualised
Every three years or so I am lucky enough to attend our webhost HighWire’s spring publisher’s meeting at Stanford University in sunny California. This year was no exception—the meeting was an absolute delight. Some 200 participants shared the products showcase, presentations by publishers, insights from industry, and Highwire’s plans and projects over the two days […]
Birte Twisselmann: Let’s hear it for music and poetry
“Representation of older people in arts, music, and literature,” a seminar held at the Royal Society of Medicine, got off to a shaky start because of noisy building work next door. Eventually a new room was found and the afternoon got properly under way. Before the interruption, Estella Tincknell, associate professor for film and culture […]
Birte Twisselmann: Last words
For me, one of the best things about working at the BMJ is the fact that my job has kept evolving over the years. In September 2011 I took over the editing of our short obituaries section, and after an initial mega-panic at having to re-familiarise myself with style, process, weekly throughput, phone calls, emails, […]
Birte Twisselmann: Medical history in film and literature at the Royal Society of Medicine
The day’s event on 4 May 2011 was organised by the RSM’s History of Medicine Section, whose president, Bloomsbury general practitioner Claire Elliott, made the opening address: “Does the history of medicine make us better doctors?” Elliott is also a clinical teaching fellow in primary care at UCL, and she would certainly respond in the […]
Birte Twisselmann: Web publishing – less is more
Stanford University’s HighWire Press, webhosts to the BMJ and some 1400 other scholarly journals, convened its spring meeting in Palo Alto, California, on 7-8 June 2010 in warm, sunny weather on the stunning university campus. Some 200 US and UK publishing types attended, and the two days were filled with a real buzz from interesting […]
Birte Twisselmann on new techologies
Day 2 of the SSP (Society for Scholarly Publishing) meeting started with what was probably the best attended session of the whole event. “Geoff and Kent redux” featured the always entertaining duo of Kent Anderson (Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery) and CrossRef’s Geoff Bilder, who, in their own inimitable fashion, presented their take on […]