Open Medicine is making headlines. Here is just some of the buzz:

June 2010

McDougall staying at development agency, despite calls to quit over tobacco ties
June 24
The Canadian Press (via Winnipeg Free Press)

The board of the International Development Research Centre is standing by its chair Barbara McDougall, who has come under fire for having an overlapping tenure on the board of a tobacco giant.

It lauded her Thursday as an "outstanding, conscientious, and effective" chairman of the board for the centre, a Crown corporation created in 1970 to help developing countries find solutions to social, economic and environmental problems.

The former federal cabinet minister has been chair of the IDRC since 2007. She had been a member of Imperial Tobacco Canada's board for several years when she assumed the IDRC chairmanship. McDougall did not resign from the tobacco company's board until March of this year.

Editorials by the Canadian Medical Association Journal and the journal Open Medicine have both called for McDougall's resignation. And earlier this year, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation cancelled a $5.2 million grant to the Crown corporation when it learned of McDougall's tobacco industry involvement….


Journal says ex-cabinet minister McDougall should resign from development agency
June 21
The Canadian Press (via Winnipeg Free Press)

The Canadian Medical Association Journal has added its voice to calls that a former federal cabinet minister resign from the International Development Research Centre.

The journal says Barbara McDougall should step down as chair of the IDRC board at a two-day meeting beginning Tuesday because she was also, until recently, on the board of Imperial Tobacco Canada.

McDougall, who has been chair of the IDRC since 2007, resigned from the Imperial Tobacco board in April of this year….

In early May the journal Open Medicine also called for McDougall to resign the IDRC job. Open Medicine was started by editors who quit the CMAJ in protest when its owners, the Canadian Medical Association, fired former editor Dr. John Hoey.

 

May 2010

Journal demands McDougall leave agency over tobacco ties
May  6
The Canadian Press (via The Toronto Star)

Editors of the journal Open Medicine want a former federal cabinet minister removed as chair at the International Development Research Centre.

Open Medicine says Barbara McDougall is the wrong person to chair the board of a federal agency that funds tobacco control programs, given that until recently she was also on the board of Imperial Tobacco Canada.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation seems to agree....

Former minister’s ties to tobacco industry hurting Ottawa’s anti-smoking work
May 6
Campbell Clark, The Globe and Mail

A Canadian government development agency is increasingly being ostracized by health and tobacco-control organizations around the world who feel it has been tainted by the tobacco-industry links of its chair, former Conservative cabinet minister Barbara McDougall.

The International Development Research Centre manages international projects to discourage smoking in the developing world, but many of the groups it deals with on those initiatives are cutting ties and refusing IDRC money because Ms. McDougall was until recently a member of Imperial Tobacco’s board of directors....

On Thursday, Open Medicine, a Canadian medical journal, published an editorial calling on Ms. McDougall to resign from the agency’s board....

Pain? Yes. Gain? Not so much. Is self-testing for Type 2 diabetes worth it?
May 18
The Canadian Press (via MSN.ca)

A newly published study is renewing debate over whether it is worthwhile to ask people with Type 2 diabetes who aren't treated with insulin to routinely test their blood sugar levels.

The work, an analysis of previously published studies, showed that daily blood sugar monitoring only offers modest health benefits to people with Type 2 diabetes who aren't on insulin. It wasn't clear, the researchers concluded, whether self-monitoring of blood sugar levels reduced long-term complications from diabetes or lowered the risk of death from the condition....

 

March 2010

Clinical trial reporting ‘below an acceptable level’
March 25
Nature.com

Some of the world’s leading medical journals are trying to drive up standards in the reporting of clinical trials as a new analysis shows they are still not up to scratch.

Publications including the Lancet, the BMJ and PLOS Medicine have unveiled a new version of the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) in a renewed attempt to deal with this problem....

New clinical trial guideline created
March 25
UPI

Nine scientific journals from around the world say they have simultaneously published new guidelines to improve reporting of clinical trial findings.

The guidance was published Wednesday by PLoS Medicine, the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Annals of Internal Medicine, Open Medicine, the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, BMC Medicine and Trials.

The guidance, known as the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement, was first published in 1996 and revised in 2001. It includes a checklist to help authors write reports of randomized controlled trials so that others can judge the reliability and validity of the results....

Ethical Improvement
March 26
Editorial, The Ottawa Citizen

Your chances of getting the straight goods on medical treatment stand to improve because of a move undertaken by hundreds of medical journals today. And it all began in Ottawa.

David Moher is a senior scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He's an expert in the proper way for medical researchers to report their findings, and he says that unfortunately too many of them are slanting the results when they conduct random trials of various treatments....

That's unethical, and this week the Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and seven other major journals jointly published Moher's guidelines for how to report drug trials properly and thereby give doctors and patients the full story. Another 400 journals have endorsed them. The guidelines include details on making sure the trials are truly random, reporting results accurately, registering trials in public so they can't be hidden, and disclosing who funds them....

 

February 2010

Access to angioplasty is an hour away for most Canadians
February 2
Andre Picard, The Globe and Mail

Almost two-thirds of Canadian adults have access to a medical facility that can do emergency angioplasty within one hour of their home, a new study shows. While swift surgery is the best treatment for a common form of heart attack, researchers cautioned that, realistically, it probably can’t be provided to everyone in a vast country like Canada.

“You can take the glass-half-empty view that this is not good. But I take the glass-half-full view that 64 per cent over all is a pretty encouraging number,” said William Ghali, a professor in the Centre for Health and Policy Studies at the University of Calgary and senior author of the study, in an interview.Calgary heart attack victims benefit from surgery access....

Calgary Heart Attack Victims Benefit from Surgery Access
February 5
Colete Derworiz, The Calgary Herald

Two of every three Albertans over the age of 40 have access to the best treatment for a heart attack, according to a study released Thursday by the University of Calgary.

The research, published this week in the online journal Open Medicine, shows 63.9 per cent of Canadians can get an angioplasty -- considered the best treatment to improve a patient's chance of survival -- within one hour of having a heart attack.

"Ontario and Quebec have the highest access," said Alka Patel, a PhD student at the U of C who's the lead author on the study. "Alberta was close to the national average.

"It's not how much population is in each province, but it's how the population is distributed," she added.
...

Calgary Best Place to Have Heart Attack: Study
February 5
CBC News

Calgary is the best place in Canada to suffer a heart attack, a study carried out by scientists at the University of Calgary faculty of medicine suggests.

The reason: Calgarians have quick and easy access to life-saving angioplasty treatment 24 hours a day at Foothills Medical Centre.

One key factor for surviving a heart attack is getting to a hospital that is equipped to open a blocked blood vessel to the heart within one hour, said the study published in the online journal Open Medicine....

Hep C cases linked to residential schools
February 12
Darah Hansen, Vancouver Sun

Alarming patterns of injection drug use and hepatitis C infection among aboriginal youth in the province are linked to the traumas endured by their parents and grandparents at residential school, a new University of B.C. study has found.

The paper, published in the medical journal Open Medicine, looked at a group of 512 young aboriginal people in Vancouver and Prince George.

Two hundred and eighty-six participants reported injection drug use when they enrolled in the study. Of those reporting injection drug use, 59 per cent were infected with hepatitis C.

According to the findings, participants -- especially young women -- who had at least one parent who attended residential school were particularly vulnerable to hepatitis C infection....

B.C. study says residential school survivors' kids at risk of infectious disease
February 11
The Canadian Press

Drug-using aboriginal women are at particular risk of contracting hepatitis C if at least one of their parents was forced to attend a residential school, suggests a new study.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia say the study of at-risk First Nations youth is the first to find a link between historical trauma, injection drug use and hepatitis C infection.

The study published in the medical journal Open Medicine surveyed a group of 512 young, aboriginal people from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and the northern B.C. city of Prince George.

A total of 268 participants admitted to injection drug use, with 59 per cent of them testing positive for the hepatitis C virus.

The findings were released by the Cedar Project, a long-term Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded study that monitors HIV and hepatitis rates among young aboriginal drug users in B.C....

Historic Trauma in Aboriginals Boosts Hep C Risk: Study
February 12
Amina Zafar, CBC News

The trauma of having a parent who was forced to attend a residential school is linked to higher rates of hepatitis C infection among aboriginal young people in B.C., new research suggests.

The research was part of the Cedar Project, a long-term collaborative research project focusing on HIV and hepatitis C infection in young aboriginal drug users in British Columbia.

The project aims to understand the relationship between historical trauma — such as having a parent or grandparent who attended a residential school — and vulnerability to blood-borne diseases.

Researchers had already linked a history of sexual abuse among the young group under study with having a parent who attended a residential school or was involved in the child welfare system.

The latest study focused on hepatitis C rates. The Public Health Agency of Canada estimates the prevalence of hepatitis C infection is 0.8 per cent in the general Canadian population, but says the disease is seven times more prevalent among aboriginal people than non-aboriginal people.

One-third of young native drug users have hepatitis C, study finds; Residential-school victims' children at greater risk
February 11
Andre Picard, The Globe and Mail

More than one-third of young aboriginal people in B.C. who use illicit drugs are infected with hepatitis C, a new study shows. 

While high rates of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) are not unexpected, particularly among intravenous drug users, the research found that members of this group who are children of residential-school survivors have twice the rate of infection.

"This study confirms the devastating impact that the trauma experienced through residential schools continues to (have on) young people today," said Chief Wayne Christian, leader of the Splatsin Secwepemc Nation and co-author of the study.

He said young people often turn to drugs as a way of coping with "unresolved historical and lifetime trauma, including the impact of the residential school system."

Earlier research showed that children of those who attended residential schools suffer markedly higher rates of sexual abuse, are more likely to be in foster care, and are more likely to use illicit drugs. But this study is the first to show that the impact includes higher rates of infectious disease....

Williams wrong to seek U.S. Care
February 14
Editorial, Victoria Times Colonist

The spectacle of Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams going to a U.S. hospital for heart surgery has angered many Canadians. His office is refusing to divulge details, but Williams likely could have been treated in Canada.

It's true that some complex procedures are not available in Newfoundland. The premier's operation might be one of them.

However, hospitals in Ontario and Quebec specialize in almost every form of cardiac surgery. And the quality they provide easily matches that of American clinics....

It's surprising that government leaders in this country have not stepped forward to answer the smears. Rarely have Canadian politicians been handed an easier task.

There is a wealth of hard data showing that American hospital care is at best equal to, and in several respects less reliable than, our own. That is the conclusion of a massive study published recently in the journal Open Medicine....

 

September 2009

Open Medicine provides medical knowledge to the public
Marco Visscher, Ode magazine

Anita Palepu was an associate editor at the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2006 when the publisher fired two editors in a conflict over editorial independence. Angry at what she felt was a move to allow advertisers to dictate what appeared in the journal, Palepu and some other colleagues resigned. But she says cheerfully, "Instead of being outraged, I'm doing something about it." Within a year, Palepu became co-founder and co-editor of Open Medicine, a free, independent online quarterly that offers peer-reviewed science and analysis. In the first issue, the editors stated that "medical knowledge should be public and free from undeclared influence."

 

August 2009

Medical journal 'authors' threaten care: experts; 'Honorary' Input
August 14
Tom Blackwell, National Post

A new Canadian survey suggests studies published in medical journals often list "honorary authors" who had nothing to do with the work, and warns the phenomenon can lead to poor health-care practices....

Regardless, listing honorary or gift authors is questionable for a number of reasons, said Dr. Anita Palepu, a University of British Columbia medical professor and co-editor of Open Medicine, an "open-access" journal launched partly in response to ethical issues.

"It's fraudulent, they're lying," she said. "It's kind of frightening that people who are supposed to be professional role models are doing this.... This is how scientific fraud and deception gets perpetuated."


Cervical cancer diagnoses linked to lack of Pap tests
August 12
André Picard, The Globe and Mail

Women who have never had a Pap test are almost three times as likely to be diagnosed with a deadly form of cervical cancer as women who have regularly undergone the simple gynecological test, a new Canadian study shows.

While the research, published in the medical journal Open Medicine, demonstrates the value of the screening test, it also sheds light on the barriers to testing.

The researchers, led by Kathleen Decker of CancerCare Manitoba, found that women in that province had, on average, about 18 opportunities to have a Pap test over a five-year period.

Yet, among those diagnosed with an advanced form of cervical cancer, 54 per cent had not undergone a Pap test in the previous five years, compared with 33 per cent of women in the general population. Moreover, one in four women had never had a Pap test....

World's Best Health Care
August 26
Editorial, New York Times

Critics of President Obama's push for health care reform have been whipping up fear that proposed changes will destroy our "world's best" medical system and make it like supposedly inferior systems elsewhere.

The emptiness of those claims became apparent recently when researchers from the Urban Institute released a report analyzing studies that have compared the clinical effectiveness and quality of care in the United States with the care dispensed in other advanced nations. They found a mixed bag, with the United States doing better in some areas, like cancer care, and worse in others, like preventing deaths from treatable and preventable conditions.

The bottom line was unmistakable. The analysts found no support for the claim routinely made by politicians that American health care is the best in the world and no hard evidence of any particular area in which American health care is truly exceptional....

Contrary to what one hears in political discourse, the bulk of the research comparing the United States and Canada found a higher quality of care in our northern neighbor. Canadians, for example, have longer survival times while undergoing renal dialysis and after a kidney transplant. Of 10 studies comparing the care given to a broad range of patients suffering from a diverse group of ailments, five favored Canada, three yielded mixed results, and only two favored the United States.

 

July 2009

Medical journals to follow strict reporting checklist; Guidelines geared to improve quality
July 21
Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen / CanWest News Service

Your doctor watches over your heart, your flu, your baby's delivery, using the latest medical information. But who knows whether that information is right?

An Ottawa-led group has rewritten the rules that medical journals --five of them so far, others likely in the near future--will use in publishing the reviews and analyses that summarize research for your doctor.

David Moher of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, who led the international group, says new rules are badly needed....

Five journals, normally competitors, published the new reviewers' checklist jointly last week: PLoS Medicine, the British Medical Journal, Open Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Journal of Clinical Epidemiology.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research have also applauded the work.

The checklist lays out 27 steps, ranging from choosing an accurate title through proper searching, data analysis, drawing conclusions, and finally revealing funding sources.

The result, says Moher, will be major reviews "reported in a very transparent manner, and (which) empower readers to make some decisions about how the review was done, and its findings. This is missing from many reports of systematic reviews" today.
"Readers shouldn't have to guess."

 

June 2009

MDs urged to be frank about death; Study shows patients, families reap benefits
June 17
CanWest News Service (via The Daily News (Kamloops))

Doctors need to be more open in discussing death and preparations for dying with terminally ill patients and their families, according to a study by a Queen's University end-of-life expert.

"One of the reasons doctors don't discuss death with their patients is that they don't want to destroy hope," says Daren Heyland, a professor of Medicine at Queen's and research director at the Clinical Evaluation Research Unit at Kingston General Hospital.

"Our study shows for the first time that when the prognosis is discussed with seriously ill patients and their families, satisfaction with care may be greater, especially satisfaction with communication and decision-making."

Heyland's findings appear in the current edition of the journal Open Medicine....

Doctors told to be honest about death; Patients and families have time to prepare if discussions are open
June 17
Stuart Laidlaw, The Toronto Star

When it comes to doctors dealing with terminally ill patients, honesty is the best policy, a new Queen's University study says.

"Inattention to this is going to cause distress for them and their families," the lead author of the study, Daren Heyland, said in a telephone interview.

The study, published in Open Medicine, is based on a survey of 440 patients with cancer or end-stage diseases and 160 family members at five Canadian hospitals.

Only 18 per cent of patients and 30 per cent of families said they discussed the prognosis with their doctors, even among very sick patients with more than 50 per cent probability of death within the next few months, the study found.

This has to change, said Heyland, professor of medicine at Queen's and research director at the clinical evaluation research unit at Kingston General Hospital.

Patients with terminal illness and their families who had open and honest discussions with their doctors were more satisfied with the level of care given and had time to prepare for the impending death....

May 2009

Non-penetrating acupuncture effective for pain relief
May 19
CTV.ca News Staff

It doesn't matter whether acupuncture needles puncture the skin or not; the results on pain relief are about the same, Japanese researchers report in the online journal, Open Medicine.

Acupuncture is popular in alternative medicine as a treatment of pain, but its effectiveness has remained controversial.

Part of the problem has been designing a study that would allow it to be "double-blind" -- that is, one that allowed both the patients and the acupuncturists to be unaware of which patients were receiving real acupuncture and those receiving simulated.

Nobuari Takakura and Hiroyoshi Yajima of Tokyo Ariake University of Medical and Health Sciences solved that problem by developing non-penetrating placebo needles that appear like the real thing but that don't puncture the skin.


No difference in pain intensity from penetrating acupuncture needles: study
May 19
CBC News

The pain-relieving effects of acupuncture with penetrating and non-penetrating needles are largely the same, Japanese researchers say.

In Tuesday's issue of the online journal Open Medicine, researchers described the first double-blind study, the gold standard in clinical research, of acupuncture.

"Needle penetration did not confer a specific analgesic advantage over non-penetrating (placebo) needle application," Nobuari Takakura and Hiroyosi Yajima of Tokyo Ariake University of Medical and Health Sciences concluded in the journal.

 

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 me

ISSN 1911-2092