“Many of the people who made the CMAJ one of the top five medical journals in the world...are involved in Open Medicine.”—The Canadian Press

Open Medicine is making headlines. Here are some examples of the buzz our articles are making:

 

APRIL 2009

CBC Radio's Fresh Air

James Maskalyk and James Orbinski interviewed on the subject of volunteerism and humanitarianism.

How many times have you thought...."I'd really like to volunteer, do some good work for others," and then life gets in the way... work, family, other responsibilities.. and that noble intention gets put on the back burner. What does it take to make that first step towards action? Mary Ito asked two doctors who work on the front lines of humanitarian aid—Dr. James Orbinski, author of An Imperfect Offering, Humanitarian Action in the 21st Century, and Dr. James Maskalyk, author of Six Months in Sudan. 

 

MARCH 2009

"Staying Alive," episode, CBC TV's The Fifth Estate

Open Medicine's article, Science and Ideology, including on The Fifth Estate's online coverage, INSITE TIMELINE

 

Number of MRIs doubles, but poor getting even less than before: study

Sheryl Ubelacker, Health Reporter, THE CANADIAN PRESS

(via The Winnipeg Free Press)

Excerpt: An infusion of cash to cut long MRI wait times has doubled the number of the annual diagnostic scans performed in Ontario since 2004, but the increase seems to be benefiting wealthy patients far more than their poorer counterparts, a study has found.

When the study started in April 2002, patients living in the richest one-fifth of the province's neighbourhoods were 25 per cent more likely to receive magnetic resonance imaging than those living in the poorest one-fifth of neighbourhoods.

Yet even after Ontario invested $118 million to shorten wait times, it did little to narrow the gap between rich and poor. In fact, access disparity actually widened over five years, with the wealthiest patients being 38 per cent more likely to get an MRI than the poorest.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

No one tracking who gets MRIs first: Calgary study

THE CANADIAN PRESS (via CBCNews.ca Mobile)

Excerpt: The time it takes a patient who needs an MRI scan to actually get one varies widely across Canada and no one is making sure that urgent cases are handled quickly, a new study suggests.

"There's tremendous inconsistency across the country," said Dr. Tom Feasby, dean of medicine at the University of Calgary. "This is disadvantaging some people."

MRI scans are used to provide detailed images of tumours and abnormalities in the heart, brain and joints.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

 

JANUARY 2009

In the blogs:

"Free the docs"
La Repubblica’s Blog (Italy)

In the news:

Fewer mental health diagnoses from Chinese-speaking doctors: study

CBCNews.ca

Excerpt: Chinese-speaking doctors in British Columbia were less likely to diagnose mental disorders in all of their patients, according to researchers who say the findings have important implications for Chinese immigrants across North America.

In Tuesday's issue of the medical journal Open Medicine, Alice Chen, a health sciences professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and her colleague at the University of British Columbia investigated whether Chinese-speaking doctors helped Chinese immigrants to receive care, based on a review of health records from more than 270,000 people in the province.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

 

NOVEMBER 2008

Educator weighs in on Catholic board's HPV ban
Says ethics don't prohibit vaccine from being administered in schools
The Sault Star
By Michael Purvis

Excerpt: A professor of health ethics says human papillomavirus vaccinations fall "well within a morally principled Catholic value system."

Ken Kirkwood, an assistant professor of applied health ethics in the Health Sciences Program at the University of Western Ontario, takes direct aim at the Huron-Superior Catholic District School Board in an article published Tuesday in Open Medicine, an online-only medical journal.

The H-SCDSB will vote again tonight on whether or not to allow HPV vaccine to be administered by public health officials in its schools.

Click here to read the rest of this article.
 

OCTOBER 2008

Splitting pills can save millions in drug costs, study says
Savings achieved when higher-dosage medication is divided by the patient
Vancouver Sun

By Pamela Fayerman

Excerpt: Prescribing higher-dosage cholesterol-lowering pills that patients can split in half could mean cost savings of $50-million a year in B.C., says a new study.

Splitting pills makes perfect sense for seniors on fixed incomes because they can receive the same benefit for half the cost, says Colin Dormuth, lead author of the joint University of B.C. and Harvard University study.

The study, which was scheduled to be published today in the online journal Open Medicine, says there is an economic incentive to split tablets because the price per milligram for most medications called statins goes down as the dose goes up.

Click here to read the rest of this article.
 

AUGUST 2008

Some people splitting pills to save money, study finds
By THE CANADIAN PRESS
(via The Globe and Mail and The Kingston Whig Standard)

Excerpt: A small but growing percentage of British Columbians who take statins to lower their cholesterol have twigged to the fact that they can save on their medication bills by pill splitting, a new study suggests.

While the researchers only looked at records for statin prescriptions filled in British Columbia, they suggest substantial savings could be made by individuals who pay for their own drugs, by private or government-run drug plans or a combination of the two if the technique were more widely used.

"There are a lot of patients out there who are taking statins who ... could save a lot of money by splitting a larger tablet, or perhaps even moving to a lower cost statin and splitting a larger tablet of that statin and save even more money," said Colin Dormuth, an analyst in the University of British Columbia's Therapeutics Initiative and lead author of the study.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

JUNE 2008

In blogs:

Nouvelle revue médicale canadienne à comité de lecture et en libre accès : Open Medicine. Largement engagée dans la médecine 2.0
From "Pharmacritique"

Excerpt:

Open Medicine existe depuis 2007 et est indépendante, à l’instar de celle que nous connaissons déjà : PLoS (Public Library of Science)....

Cinq numéros d’Open Medicine ont déjà vu le jour, dont le premier contenait une critique de livre faite par Jerome Kassirer, ce qui est de bon augure… Comme la présence d'Alan Cassels ou Joel Lexchin. Chaque article contient un encadré très bien visible pour les déclarations d’intérêts. L’éditorial du premier numéro est signé par James Maskalyk, actif au Soudan, aux côtés de « Médecins sans frontières », et qui tient un blog sur ses expériences de terrain.

Click here to read the rest of this post. 

 

MAY 2008

In blogs: 

Celebrating One Year of Open Medicine @ BCLA
From "The Information Policy Blog" 

Excerpt:

During the final conference block at the 2008 British Columbia Library Association conference in Richmond, a session packed with many intriguing workshops, I had the privilege of convening a talk by Anita Palepu and Dean Giustini, titled “Open Medicine: The first year of independent, open-access publishing. “

The presentation touched on the issues of editorial independence in medical journals that led up to the creation of Open Medicine as an editorially independent, “gold” open access, general medical journal, built and published with open source software. Palepu and Giustini tag-teamed their way through a brief history of open access in Canada as well as the steps in establishing an OA journal. A unique feature of the presentation was a highlight on the value a librarian can add to an editorial board, enhancing the journal’s impact.

Click here to read the rest of this post. 

 

MARCH 2008 

In blogs:

Michael Geist on E-publishing and the Law
From "BlogTO"

Excerpt:

Geist's talk described many open source initiatives that are changing the way people think about access to information and services. Read on to discover what Geist terms "the new normal" in today's ever-evolving world....

One of these initiatives involved the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), after a dispute with its editorial board over what they perceived to be editorial interference from the CMA said Geist.

"Those same medical professionals turned around and created an open access, peer-reviewed medical journal called Open Medicine," says Geist. "This software platform, created out of University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, is used by over a thousand open source journals, most of them coming from the developing world.

"They are now actively publishing under a Creative Commons license to not only make copies, but to build on the research and data that gets posted. They have found that they are doing things with Open Medicine that they simply couldn't do with the CMAJ.

"They have open chat forum, where experts debate the value of the research. And there can be an ongoing dialogue between people who are published as well as people who are reading and using that research. There are tremendous moves towards open access taking place certainly within the health field, but also in a range of other places with a distinctly Canadian flavour."

Click here to read the rest of this post. 

 

FEBRUARY 2008

Hippocrates Behind the Wheel

National Post (Editorial)

Excerpt: A new study published on Monday by the Canadian journal Open Medicine has revealed the statistics behind what may be one of the most ignored directives in the universe of Canadian law. Section 203 of Ontario's Highway Traffic Act, which was added to the statute in 1968, requires all physicians in the province to report the name of any patient they treat who has a medical condition that may make operating a motor vehicle dangerous. Three Ontario researchers set out to show, using trauma records from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Ontario Health Insurance Plan information, what everybody already suspected: that such reporting almost never happens. Of 1,605 drivers involved in serious accidents requiring trauma care over a five-year period, fully 596 suffered from reportable illnesses, including alcohol abuse, heart disease and neurological and psychiatric disorders. But only 28 had been turned in to the Ministry of Transportation for a hearing on their ability to continue to drive.

Click here to read the original article by Redelmeier et al.

To read the full-text article, please visit: http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=304106

 

Researchers sound alarm over unfit drivers

By Carolyn Abraham, medical reporter
The Globe and Mail

Excerpt: Hundreds of medically unfit drivers remain on the road in Canada, resulting in countless crashes and deaths because doctors are failing to report them, researchers have found.Doctors in seven provinces are legally obliged to report to transport authorities patients with medical conditions that could compromise their ability to drive safely.

 

Doctors rarely report patients who shouldn't be driving to licensing bodies

By Helen Branswell
Canadian Press

Excerpt:

TORONTO - Doctors in Ontario are failing to report patients who may be medically unfit to drive, even though provincial law requires them to do so, according to a study published Monday.

"The conclusion from our article is that the mandatory reporting laws do not achieve their intended purpose," said lead author Dr. Donald Redelmeier, director of clinical epidemiology at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and a senior scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.

Seven provinces and the three territories have laws requiring doctors to notify licensing authorities if a patient who drives develops one of a series of medical conditions which might make them unfit to drive. Depending on the illness, a licensing authority may require a driver to take a driving test, though some could trigger virtually automatic suspension of driving privileges.

Click here to read the original article by Redelmeier et al.

To read the full-text article, please visit: http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5iGsaiVLZ6hhp_jRKjIicyt6Me4iw 

 

Listen to Dr. Donald Redelmeier talk about his study, published February 11 in Open Medicine, on CBC Radio One's As It Happens
http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/asithappens/20080211-aih-1.wmv
(Approximately 2/3rds of the way through the audio file)

 

Open Source: Librarians Embrace the Google Era

By Leah Vanderjagt
Unlimited Magazine

Excerpt:

I’m a librarian at a Canadian university. When I tell people this, here’s the response I often get: “Man, who needs to go to a library anymore? Did you see that article about Google scanning all the books at Harvard? Really, what’s left for you to do?”
...
Libraries are also moving in directions that shift our focus to distribution, which is normally the job of publishers. They have the content; libraries ave the buying mandate. We have golden-anniversary marriages with publishing houses, and we’ve had our ups and downs. Now, because of web-driven publishing management software, libraries can serve as “electronic presses,” too, hosting content generated by our patrons, on our own servers, n our own terms. It’s a little permissible experimentation, outside the traditional publishing marriage vows, that’s turning out to be, well, a bit unpredictable and exciting.

When the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) editorial board resigned en-masse during a dispute, for instance, a new journal was born to stand in using open-source software: Open Medicine. Unlike the CMAJ, the content of Open Medicine is immediately and freely accessible. I don’t know what the long-term impact will be, but I like access, and so do people who want to learn about a disease they have. The speed and independence with which Open Medicine was born was interesting, and for many of my colleagues it prompted reflection, new initiatives and new directions.
Click here to read the full-text of this article. 

 

DECEMBER 2007

The New Librarians

University Affairs
December issue 

Excerpt: University of British Columbia’s libraries have also seen dramatic changes. When biomedical branch librarian Dean Giustini joined the UBC library staff 10 years ago, the biomedical library offered just three electronic journals. It now offers 40,000. Mr. Giustini, named Canadian Hospital Librarian of the Year for 2007, is a well-read and popular blogger. He maintains the Google Scholar Blog (with the stated purpose “to observe, document and comment on the evolution of academic-scholarly searching”) and is the blogger for Open Medicine, a peer-reviewed, open-access online journal that aims to provide high-quality health information.
 
In 2005, he kicked off a lengthy debate among experts with a British Medical Journal editorial entitled “How Google is changing medicine.”

Mr. Giustini doesn’t believe that the librarian’s role is diminished by today’s ready availability of information. “I think our role will be helping people to teach each other how to find information, but also how to critically evaluate information,” he says. “People need to see us as knowledgeable about knowledge, in all its forms.”

To read the full text of this article, please visit: http://www.universityaffairs.ca/issues/2007/december/new_librarians_01.html

 

NOVEMBER 2007

Medical Study Fatigue with guest Richard Smith

"Mansbridge One on One"
November 24, 2007

It seems every week there's a new medical study in the headlines, followed weeks later by other studies that seem to contradict the first findings.

What are we supposed to believe? And are journalists being vigilant enough in what they choose to report?

It's a delicate question but this week's guest has some tough answers to consider.

Watch the complete episode featuring Richard Smith, click here.


Home testing of blood thinner levels superior

CTV.ca
November 20, 2007

Excerpt: An underused therapy could offer hope to the thousands of patients who regularly monitor their blood to ensure they are taking the right amount of blood thinner medications.

Blood thinners, also called anticoagulants, save lives by preventing blood clots that can cause strokes or heart attacks. But they can be are tricky. If a patient takes too much, it can lead to uncontrolled bleeding; too little and the risk of blood clots returns.

So patients taking them have to go regularly to a medical lab for blood tests to make sure their blood is the right consistency. and to have their drug dosage adjusted.

Now, a Canadian study suggests a better option may be home testing.

For the full text of this article, visit:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071116/coagulation_monitoring_071115/20071120?hub=Health

Click here to read the original review by Wells et al.

 

OCTOBER 2007

Vancouver safe-injection site can operate until June under six-month extension

Canadian Press
October 2, 2007

Excerpt: Ottawa's six-month reprieve for Vancouver's safe injection site simply allows the government to shelve the issue until after a possible fall election, leaving a suffering community in limbo, supporters of the site said Tuesday.

Though they applauded the announcement from the federal government that In-site can remain open until next June, doctors, community activists and opposi-tion politicians said they are frustrated that a health issue has become a po-litical football.

Health Canada announced Tuesday it would extend the exemption from Canada's drug laws that allows Insite to operate. The exemption was set to run out at the end of the year.


SEPTEMBER 2007 

Elsevier's Open-Access Plan: Advertisers Pay

The-Scientist.com

September 10, 2007

Excerpt: The New York Times reports today that scientific and medical publisher Reed-Elsevier, which publishes 400 journals, has introduced a Web portal, www.OncologySTAT.com, that gives doctors free access to the latest articles from 100 of its own pricey medical journals and that plans to sell advertisements against the content. In exchange for personal information, oncologists can receive immediate access to cancer-related articles from various Elsevier journals, which include The Lancet. ... The move, notes Dean Giustini at the Open Medicine blog, could be a new way to think about open access that wouldn't rely on an author pays model. Nor would it rely on a traditional model in which subscribers -- whether they're paying out of their pockets or accessing journals through an institutional library -- pay. It's worth noting that the material on OncologySTAT would only be freely available to those who qualify, which is a limited sort of open access.

For the full text of this article, visit: http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53577/

"Doctors, Get Tough on Drugs": Tony Clement

National Review of Medicine
September 3, 2007

Excerpt: Disdain for the government's harm-reduction denialism has been swift and fierce. Over 130 physicians and scientists signed a petition released the day after Mr Clement's speech, condemning the government's "potentially deadly" misrepresentation of the overwhelmingly positive evidence for harm reduction programs including Vancouver's Insite safe-injection site, where nurses provide addicts with clean needles and a safe place to use drugs. Among those who signed the petition are 2006 International AIDS Conference co-chair Dr Mark Wainberg, Montreal public health director Dr Richard Lessard and Dr Robert Brunham of the BC Centre for Disease Control. Doctors and scientists from nearly every major university in Canada put pen to paper.

The petition endorses a commentary written by Dr Stephen Hwang, of Toronto's Centre for Research on Inner City Health, in Open Medicine which condemns the government's handling of the Insite case. "The current federal government has philosophical objections to harm reduction initiatives," says Dr Hwang. "They're trying to obscure the evidence by saying the research on Insite is not clear."

To read the full text of this article, visit: http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/issue/2007/09_15/4_policy_politics01_15.html

Click here to read the original commentary by Hwang.


Conservatives confuse science with moralizing

Vancouver Sun
September 1, 2007

Excerpt: In an editorial directed at the federal government's mendacious attempts to discredit the science surrounding Insite, Vancouver's supervised injection site, University of Toronto medical professor Stephen Hwang notes that "the health of the nation is placed in peril if our leaders ignore crucial research findings simply because they run contrary to a rigid policy agenda driven by ideology or fixed beliefs."

Although Hwang's comments, which were endorsed by 133 medical and scientific experts, were published in the current issue of the online journal Open Medicine, they could just as easily have been written a century ago.

To read the full text of this article, visit: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=8767fe87-3a55-472c-b987-db063314d667

Click here to read the original commentary by Hwang.

 

AUGUST 2007

American Ex-pats Critique Our Health Care System

The Globe and Mail
August 23, 2007

Excerpt: Despite all the attention paid to the Canada-U.S. comparison, we rarely, if ever, hear from consumers/patients at the coal face.

That void has been filled by a fascinating paper published recently in Open Medicine by Saskatoon-based health consultant Steven Lewis and colleagues at the University of Calgary and the University of Toronto.

The assumption is that given a choice - and the financial means - patients would invariably choose the U.S. system.

But the research, which involved 310 Americans living in Canada (all for less than five years), offered a much more nuanced view.

For the full text of this article, visit: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070823.wlpicard23/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/

Click here to read the original research article by S Lewis et al.

Science ‘Trumped by Ideology’

The Tyee
August 22, 2007

Excerpt: Today's Big Story has already aired its views on Insite, Vancouver's pioneering supervised drug injection site. But for whatever reason, Today's Big Story lacks the intellectual heft of, say, 130 scientists.

Luckily for us, there is Dr. Stephen Hwang. Hwang, a research scientist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, blasted the Tory government yesterday in a commentary published in the Open Medicine journal.

And, in addition to Hwang's own, not insignificant signature, the piece, which castigated Tory Health Minister Tony Clement for ignoring and distorting the science on Insite, bore the endorsement of 130 of Canada's top researchers and physicians.

For the full text of this article, visit: http://thetyee.ca/Bigstory/2007/08/22/Insite/

Click here to read the original commentary by S Hwang.

Science, not politics must decide fate of safe injection site: Doctors

The Canadian Press
August 21, 2007

Excerpt: A group of 130 prominent doctors, scientists and public health professionals took aim at the federal government Tuesday for putting political ideology ahead of scientific evidence when considering the future of Vancouver's safe injection site.

The group, which included British Columbia's chief medical officer of health, the head of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Montreal's director of public health, endorsed a commentary published in the journal Open Medicine that said the injection site was being judged by a different standard than other health measures.

"The health of the nation is placed in peril if our leaders ignore crucial research findings simply because they run contrary to a rigid policy agenda driven by ideology or fixed beliefs," states the article, written by Dr. Stephen Hwang, a Toronto researcher on inner city health.

For the full text of this article, visit: http://www.cbc.ca/cp/health/070821/x082135A.html

Click here to read the original commentary by S Hwang.

Quebec Lags in Services to Prevent Breast Cancer

The Montreal Gazette
August 15, 2007

Excerpt: Breast-cancer prevention services in Quebec lag far behind those in the other provinces - a worrisome trend that's placing women's health at risk, a national study has found.

Women in Quebec are three to four times less likely to take the chemotherapy drug Tamoxifen for preventive purposes than their counterparts in the rest of the country, the researchers discovered.

The study focused on women who have the BRCA1 or 2 genetic mutations that cause up to 10 per cent of all breast cancers. Such women have a strong family history of the disease and usually undergo genetic counselling to find out whether they're at risk.

For the full text of this article, visit: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=19868b92-69c6-423a-99db-1589b779a5da

Click here to read the original research article by K Metcalfe et al.

Traitement du cancer du sein: Quebec, nation distincte

Le Devoir
August 15, 2007

Extrait: Quand il s'agit de cancer du sein, le Québec fait encore une fois figure de nation distincte. Selon une étude dévoilée hier, les Québécoises porteuses d'une mutation génétique les plaçant à haut risque de développer un cancer du sein sont environ deux fois plus nombreuses que les autres Canadiennes à n'avoir recours à aucun traitement préventif pour faire échec à cette maladie potentiellement mortelle.

L'étude en question, publiée dans le journal médical canadien Open Medicine hier, portait sur 672 femmes porteuses des mutations génétiques BRCA1 et BRCA2, dépistées entre 1995 et 2003 dans un des 12 centres canadiens de traitement du cancer ayant pris part à l'étude, dont le CHUM.

Pour l'article complet, voir: http://www.ledevoir.com/2007/08/15/153434.html#

Suivre le lien pour lire l'article original par K Metcalfe et al.

JULY 2007

Ethnicity Plays Role in Size of Baby

The Vancouver Sun
July 19, 2007 

Excerpt: Ethnicity plays a significant role in the size of newborns, according to a study of nearly 2,700 infants born at B.C. Women's Hospital, the first of its kind in Canada.

In B.C., where 40 per cent of women delivering at Women's Hospital are of East Asian (China, Hong Kong) descent and 10 per cent are of South Asian (India, Pakistan) descent, there has been a growing awareness of possible size differences, so researchers set out to determine whether they are statistically significant enough to stop basing norms on somewhat arbitrary Caucasian standards.

"The greatest utility of this study is that we can inject some common sense into the discussion, so that we don't label as malnourished babies who may be a little small, relative to Caucasian standards, and so that we don't give parents the anxiety-causing idea that their child is not normal," said co-researcher Dr. Michael Klein.

For the full text of this article, visit: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=d411989f-4e07-4758-ab42-563e5cc605e2

Click here to read the original research article by P Janssen et al.

Sicko Proves our Health Care Approach is Working

The Montreal Gazette
July 15, 2007

Excerpt: In the United States, Canada is often attacked -- especially when Moore lionizes us -- as a failed socialist experiment with grotesquely long lineups for medical attention. Happily, Danielle Martin, board chairwoman of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, came to our defence this month in a letter to the Wall Street Journal.

She wrote: "In a systematic review of 38 studies published in Open Medicine in May, 17 leading Canadian and U.S. researchers confirmed the Canadian system leads to health outcomes as good, or better, than the U.S. private system, at less than 50 per cent of the cost."

For the full text of this article, visit: http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=9b59023d-8eab-412d-a966-aeaae6228629&k=48941

Click here to read the original research article by G Guyatt et al.

JUNE 2007

American Tout Canadian Health Care

The Ottawa Citizen
June 21, 2007

Excerpt: Americans living in Canada prefer the U.S. health system for speed, quality and diagnostic technology, but they also applaud the equity and cost-effectiveness of Canada's system, says a new study. In the final analysis, 40 per cent prefer the Canadian system.

The study, released yesterday in the online medical journal Open Medicine, was based on the responses of 310 Americans living in Canada between two and five years, mostly in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. There is a margin of error between four and five percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The participants were upper middle-class, mostly the kind of people likely to be well-insured in the U.S., said lead researcher Steven Lewis, a health policy analyst and adjunct professor at the University of Calgary.

"They had high expectations of health care in Canada," he said. "I was surprised by the solidarity they showed for the Canadian system. Even their praise of the American system was qualified. They said, 'Yes, it is good. But it is expensive, and not everyone has access'."

For the full text of this article, visit: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=4af08562-9134-4b0e-a46e-0da67674b153

Click here to read the original research article by S Lewis et al.

MAY 2007

We're Number Two: Canada Has as Good or Better Health Care than the U.S.

ScientificAmerican.com

May 03, 2007

Excerpt: Gordon H. Guyatt, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who coined the term "evidence-based medicine," collaborated with 16 of his colleagues in an exhaustive survey of existing studies on the outcomes of various medical procedures in both the U.S. and Canada. Their work appears in the inaugural issue of the new Canadian journal Open Medicine, and comes at a time when many in Canada are debating whether or not to move that country's single-payer system toward for-profit delivery of care. The ultimate conclusion of the study is that the Canadian medical system is as good as the U.S. version, at least when measured by a single metric—the rate at which patients in either system died.

For the full text of this article, visit: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa011&articleID=53B61670-E7F2-99DF-3E9FD5664899BF24

Click here for the original research article by G Guyatt et al. 

 

APRIL 2007

Since its launch in April, Open Medicine has caught the attention of news media around the world. Here is a sampling of the coverage:

“Open Medicine...is a true journal of the new millennium. Besides publishing online only, it provides open access for readers around the world, permits authors to hold the copyright to their work, and bans all pharmaceutical or medical-device company advertising.”—National Review of Medicine

 “The new competition [Open Medicine] with its emphasis on autonomy is predicted to improve medical journals around the world.”—The Hamilton Spectator

For more coverage of Open Medicine, see:

CBC News (CBC.CA)
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/04/17/open-medicine.html

The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/news/article/2050/former-editors-of-canadian-journal-create-a-new-online-competitor

The Tyee
http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2007/04/18/OpenMed/

Maclean’s
http://www.macleans.ca/education/universities/article.jsp?content=20070424_121900_8592

 

ISSN 1911-2092