Media release: Defining hospitalist physicians using clinical practice data
Open Medicine
A peer-reviewed, independent, open-access journal.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Defining hospitalist physicians using clinical practice data: a systems level pilot study of Ontario physicians.
Today, Open Medicine <http://www.openmedicine.ca/> published a study in which the authors propose and apply a functional method to identify hospital-based physicians and describe the growth and prevalence of a relatively new but poorly-defined specialty—that of hospital-based practice.
In the province of Ontario, hospital-based physicians have grown in number since cutbacks to physician reimbursement during the mid-199...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - September 17, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Opening medicine
If you’re on our Facebook group (and if you’re not, you should get on right away), or following this blog, or even if you ever read the daily newspaper, you’ll have heard about Tarek Loubani. Dr. Loubani is a London, Ontario emergency physician and humanitarian. He’s also Open Medicine’s technical advisor (he get our articles up on the web, and manages pretty much all other technical aspects of our bold venture into open access medical publishing). Tarek normally works behind the scenes at OM, but does blog for us as well and has made front-page news over and over during the past 18 days. It was 18 days ago tha...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - September 3, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Media release: Open Medicine urges prompt return of Dr. Tarek Loubani
Topics: global health; media release; Tarek Loubani (Source: Open Medicine Blog -)
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - August 22, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Help bring Dr. Loubani home
Dear Open Medicine community,
if you've been watching the news you'll have seen that Foreign Affairs has just confirmed that two Canadians were arrested in Cairo yesterday. What you might not know is that one of them is a vital member of the Open Medicine team, Dr. Tarek Loubani. Dr. Loubani, an emergency room physician in London, Ontario, is also Open Medicine's technical advisor--in-between running international medical humanitarian missions in the Middle East. He was arrested in Cairo on his way to one such mission.
We ask you all to please copy the following letter into an email and send it to bairdj@parl.gc.ca. Inter...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - August 18, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Curing what ails us
Who will champion the CMA’s health policy recommendations?
The Canadian Medical Association, which has lately been taking a far more social determinants-focused approach to health, has come out swinging with a report clearly titled “Health Care in Canada: What Makes Us Sick?”, which identifies poverty as one of four fundamental factors external to the health care system that underlie ill health among Canadians.
The report includes some really interesting positions including calls for a health impact assessment to accompany Cabinet decision-making.
Of course, the CMA is not the first body to make poverty less a moral...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - August 7, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Synchronizing research into HIV/AIDS prevention in Africa
The latest issue of Open Medicine is not our usual research paper or comment piece. This week, we are proud to feature the proceedings of the Afri-Can Forum, which took place in Entebbe, Uganda in January of this year. Researchers from African and Canadian institutions as well as senior officials of public funders and NGOs met for three days. They discussed projects, programs and experience, and how African and Canadian researchers might work more closely together to make a greater impact on the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
In the words of the co-chairs of the Forum, “A unique feature was the fact that it was led by Africans. ...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - July 22, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Open access and academic freedom
This week The Guardian has an insightful piece on the risks and rewards of open access publishing for academic freedom. It's a thoughtful take on it all and worth reading in its (not very long) entirety. Careful readers will notice a reference to an article that members of Open Medicine's editorial team published in the Canadian Journal of Communication on the occasion of the launch of our journal. While open access and particularly models for open access medical journal publishing have evolved over the past half-decade, the rationale for creating an open access medical journal--to provide "a venue for the emergence of new...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - July 13, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Obesity, disease and the social determinants of health
With the American Medical Association’s recent decision to reclassify obesity as a disease (it was previously "a condition"), the Canadian Medical Association may well begin considering a similar stance beginning at their August meeting and continuing into the fall. In practice, doctors in Canada may already treat obesity as a disease; however, a formal decision to label it as such would have policy implications.
A review of the CMA’s discourse on obesity over the years appeared in a 2012 issue of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, and it highlights some concerns with medicalization of obesity. The author, Ang...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - July 4, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Overstating the case
Andre Picard has a great piece in today's Globe and Mail. It's summed up pretty well in the headline, "Take news of cancer 'breakthrough' with a big grain of salt". He looks at the coverage of the recent research from renowned cancer researchers Tak Mak and Dennis Slamon that was described breathlessly--both in the press release from Princess Margaret Hospital and in subsequent media reports--as a "breakthrough" drug.
Mr. Picard is not putting down the research. Rather, he's pointing out the very common flaws in how science and medical news are portrayed in the media. Too often, journalists rely on media releases rather th...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - June 21, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Media release: Herpes zoster as a marker of underlying malignancy
Open Medicine
A peer-reviewed, independent, open-access journal.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Herpes zoster as a marker of underlying malignancy
Today, Open Medicine <http://www.openmedicine.ca/> published a study assessing whether a diagnosis of herpes zoster is a risk factor for subsequent malignancy.
Both herpes zoster—more commonly known as shingles--and cancer are associated with suppression of the immune system; however, it has been unclear what, if any, association there is between an earlier finding of shingles and later diagnosis of a malignant tumor.
“This is, we believe, the largest study to date examining th...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - June 18, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Media release: Probiotics vs. C.difficile and diarrhea—a systematic review
Open Medicine
A peer-reviewed, independent, open-access journal.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Probiotics for the prevention of antibiotic-associated diarrhea and Clostridium difficile infection among hospitalized patients: systematic review and meta-analysis
Hot on the heels of a flurry of research looking into the potential benefits of probiotics, Open Medicine <http://www.openmedicine.ca/> published a major review today of what we know about their use specifically for hospital in-patients.
In “Probiotics for the prevention of antibiotic-associated diarrhea and Clostridium difficile infection among hospitalized patients:...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - June 4, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Good night Dr. Morgentaler
Henry Morgentaler died this morning, at home, at 90.
Dr. Morgentaler has had a Tommy Douglas-scale influence on health policy in Canada. Beginning in 1967 when he defended women's right to safely terminate a pregnancy before a Health and Welfare Committee of the House of Commons, through years of performing illegal, safe abortions in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg, through 1988 when the law against abortion was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada and beyond, the Polish-born Holocaust survivor, humanist and family physician was at the forefront of the struggle to make abortion legal, safe and accessible in Canada.
A...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - May 29, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
How to Fix Canada's Health Care System
Therese Stukel and David Henry, two lead authors on this week's OM paper, argue on the Huffington Post blog that Canada's health care system requires urgent reform, particularly in the area of chronic care delivery (as it's currently designed for acute, episodic care even as chronic disease accounts for an ever-greater share of health care spending). And they cite their research into the viability of using virtual multi-specialty networks as a model for delivering more coordinated care. You can check out their piece right here.
Topics: health policynews (Source: Open Medicine Blog -)
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - May 25, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Making an impact: the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment
Open Medicine has just signed onto a brand-new, worldwide declaration called the San Francisco Declaration On Research Assessment, or DORA for short. The declaration represents a response to a widespread concern among science and other researchers about the journal impact factors that are used, in its words, "as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist's contribution, or in hiring, promotion or funding decisions".
Impact factors, as PLOS Medicine noted in an article back in 2006, are a sort of a game based on secretive rules (the decision on which articles are mo...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - May 24, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
Improving chronic disease management
Providing better care for patients with chronic disease requires well-connected networks, each consisting of a primary care provider, specialists, and hospitals. Ideally, the combination of good care and good communication between a family doctor and specialists will reduce re-hospitalizations and improve patients’ well-being, while reducing the costs to an overburdened health care system facing ever more chronically ill patients with long-term, complex care needs.
This week Open Medicine published a paper in which the authors investigated the possibility of identifying existing multispeciality physician networks.
Theres...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - May 16, 2013 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs
