Five years ago today, BMJ Open appeared on the scene. Conceived as a general medical journal to provide authors a fast, transparent route to publication, BMJ Open could have developed in many different ways. Happily it has developed into a journal we’re proud of, and despite its broad scope, it has grown into a journal […]
Category: Editors at large
Tony Delamothe: Dreaming at TED
Each year’s TED conference has a theme, and this year’s, in Vancouver, was Dream. The acronym TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, but the annual program of talks long ago slipped these moorings. Before the main conference began there were two sessions devoted to presentations by TED Fellows, a hand picked cadre of rising […]
Peter Doshi: Roche to publicly post trial protocols—just kidding
“Thirdly, we will post the protocol of our trials as they are started and the results of trials once they are completed on two websites which are available to the public, clinicaltrials.gov and roche-trials.com.” So states Roche in describing one element of its 2013 policy on clinical trial data sharing. Such a policy would place […]
BMJ in the news: round-up of 2015
From the Ebola crisis to the weekend effect on hospital death rates, The BMJ publishes articles that receive extensive media coverage from top global news outlets. Here we present some of The BMJ’s biggest stories in 2015. […]
Will Stahl-Timmins: Almost impossible cancer spaghetti
NICE guidelines, produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, are detailed, and sometimes lengthy documents. They are an attempt to summarise all available evidence on a health topic, supplemented by expert opinion where evidence is not available. The BMJ has recently been publishing quite a few summaries of these NICE guidelines, aiming […]
Will Stahl-Timmins: A web of influence
As part of The BMJ‘s mission to make health information more available to our readers, I am employed to create infographics, often interactive, for our website (and sometimes the print journal too). Earlier this year, I worked on The BMJ‘s investigation into the sugar industry and its links to UK government advisory bodies. This development blog […]
Richard Hurley: Meeting the Syrian refugees arriving on a small Greek island
On Tuesday 13 October, while on holiday off the beaten track on the tiny Greek island of Amorgos, I heard that a boat of refugees had landed for the fourth time this year, bringing the total number of refugees who have landed here in 2015 to about 250. At about 17:30, George Alahouzos, a builder and volunteer with […]
The BMJ Today: The diesel scandal and breast cancer
• Paul Wilkinson and Andy Haines call for consequences to the Volkswagen diesel scandal in an editorial. Perhaps the lesson from the Volkswagen episode is not just whether manufacturers will comply with the legislation aimed at cleaning an inherently polluting fuel source. It may be time for society to commit to a decisive break with fossil fuel […]
Tessa Richards: “Millennials” seek to reshape health
What better place to debate how emerging technologies are transforming healthcare than the Silicon Valley? Bathed in sunshine, the Stanford University campus is a magnet for people with the vision and skills to create new futures, and Stanford Medicine X (#MedX) attracts health innovators from a wide range of disciplines. Now in its fifth year, […]
The BMJ Today: Dengue, refugees, exercise, and the future
• What is dengue fever, and who gets it? What are its causes, and can it be prevented? Our latest clinical review provides an overview of the current evidence, including the diagnosis, management, and complications of this globally important infection. • Blogger Alison Criado-Perez is the medical team leader on board the Phoenix, a search and rescue […]