Getting medical marijuana laws right
An interesting piece today relating to Canada's evolving laws on medical marijuana. The general issue is in the news all the time, these days, in everything from the business section to sports. And of course, Open Medicine has covered the issue before--and most recently, weighed in with this paper looking at the different ways a regulatory regime might evolve. As the authors suggest, an approach rooted in maximizing individual and societal public health concerns would be a sensible and positive way to go.   Topics: cannabismedical marijuanahealth policy (Source: Open Medicine Blog -)
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - July 26, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

CBC News on Joep Lange, triple therapy for HIV, and Dr. Lange''s links to the Canadian research community
"If we can get cold Coca–Cola and beer to every remote corner of Africa, it should not be impossible to do the same with drugs."More on Joep Lange, who died on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh17-aids-scientis... Topics: AIDS researchHIV/AIDS (Source: Open Medicine Blog -)
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - July 21, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

Healthcare system woes
A recent report from the Commonwealth Fund, a non-profit, private American foundation, compares the U.S. healthcare system with a number of its international counterparts. The study uses a number of measures to determine success, and tries to assess quality of care, access, efficiency, equity and achievement of healthy lives. It draws on surveys of patients and primary care physicians as well as data from recent studies by the World Health Organization and the OECD, and from its own national healthcare system survey, from 2011. The nations ranked are Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland,...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - July 18, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

Drug development in the sharing economy
Sharing—what a concept. With scientific research tending in two directions—on one hand, towards more proprietary knowledge and more expensive and limited access, and on the other, towards open data and open access publications—it is interesting to note a new private-public partnership based in Toronto and New York that will provide completely open access to anyone who wants to use its structural genomics data. Is this what real sharing of information should look like? Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) is a private-public partnership (including nine big pharmaceutical companies and many, many universities) that aim...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - June 23, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

Media release: Guide to noninferiority trials for novel therapies
A clinician’s guide to the assessment and interpretation of noninferiority trials for novel therapiesOpen MedicineA peer-reviewed, independent, open-access journal.FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEA new paper published today in Open Medicine offers a guide to clinicians who need to evaluate the results of noninferiority trials. A noninferiority trial is an increasingly common type of study that seeks to demonstrate that an experimental therapy is not worse than an active control. However, clinicians and residents accustomed to interpreting conventional superiority trial results may not even notice that they are dealing with a differ...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - May 6, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

Open Access is for patients too.
A flurry of study on the topic of open access--always, of course, of special interest around here--as I prepare a talk for a festival of arts and science in Toronto (more on that, to come), on the experience our journal has had with open access from shortly after the concept itself was developed and named. I am coming across all sorts of fascinating things in the process. Here is one (probably not the last link I will be posting on this topic!)--from PLOS Blogs, but written by an employee of the online platform PatientsLikeMe. An interesting and well-explained perspective on the value of open access.   Topics: Open A...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - May 1, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

Antiobiotic resistance: WHO report
And more on antibiotic resistance: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/apr/30/who-calls-urgent-action-a... Topics: antibiotic resistance (Source: Open Medicine Blog -)
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - April 30, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

The costs of open access publishing
A recent, information-rich report from the Wellcome Trust: http://blog.wellcome.ac.uk/2014/03/28/the-cost-of-open-access-publishing...   Topics: Open Access (Source: Open Medicine Blog -)
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - April 29, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

Low tech biotech
Citizen science and the DIY (do-it-yourself) movement combine in the quest to create simple, low-cost, assembled-from-basic-materials equipment capable of carrying out sophisticated diagnostic tests or other applications. Open access data can be an important component of making such equipment cost effective.  For example, this synthetic biology project funded on Kickstarter last year to engineer glowing plants as an alternate light source uses the open data of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases. On the other hand, while doctors in various medical departments and citizen tinkerers alike may ...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - April 26, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

Multiple sclerosis and evidence-based medicine
In this Guardian blog posting, an MS sufferer reflects on evidence-based medicine with clarity: http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/apr/17/multiple-s... Topics: multiple sclerosisevidence-based medicinecomplementary and alternative medicine (Source: Open Medicine Blog -)
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - April 21, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

On Choosing Wisely, Canadian edition
Choosing Wisely Canada is, of course, the Canadian version of an initiative of the American Board of Internal Medicine that seeks to reduce the number of unnecessary medical procedures done. In Canada, the campaign  will involve voluntary measures to spur both patients and physicians to reconsider the need for procedures that are not truly necessary are likely to cause harm (or little benefit); that duplicate other tests of procedures already conducted; or are not supported by evidence; You will notice that the emphasis seems to vary, with writers emphasizing the harm that can be done by such procedures and the aim of imp...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - February 24, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

Media release: Travel-acquired infections and illnesses in Canadians: surveillance report
This study, then, provides information that until now we have had to infer from travel-acquired illness in other groups. The study uncovered a number of surprises for travelling Canadians and Canadian immigrants. For example, travel to visit friends and relatives carries a particularly high risk of illness. Serious diseases, like malaria, malaria or enteric fever, are in fact common imported illnesses. And diseases significant to public health, like hepatitis B and tuberculosis, are common as well among returning travellers. “In order to maximize opportunities for prevention of these types of potentially serious infectio...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - February 11, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

Only in the U.S., you say? Pity.
Speaking of crowdfunding research (as we did yesterday right here), the Kickstarter model (which you may have heard of; it is a wildly popular site where people can seek funding, usually in small amounts from many, many people, for just about any creative project you can imagine) has come to science. Whereas citizen science and the growth of tools for collecting and aggregating knowledge have led to more and more people playing tiny but vital roles in the gruntwork of gathering raw data for many kinds of scientific research (it really runs the gamut from biodiversity to astronomy), this might be the first time that people ...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - February 7, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

Opening drug company data
It is being billed as a “stunning” win for open science--Johnson and Johnson's announcement that the company will release anonymized clinical trial data... to anyone who wants it. Well, actually the Open Data Access Project (YODA) at the Yale School of Medicine will review requests from physicians  (not clear from reports if non-physician researchers are eligible, but it would make sense that they be) for data from trials of J&J products. To start off, this will include just pharmaceuticals but the plan is to include devices and other products made by J&J. When requests are approved by YODA the physician wil...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - February 6, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs

OM in the Globe & Mail: caution needed on newly-approved drugs
Our latest study is garnering some attention, including in this article in the Globe & Mail. And on the Twittersphere! Join us at https://twitter.com/OpenMedicine or follow @OpenMedicine. This little open access medical journal that could is publishing new research and penetrating commentary at quite a pace--you’ll find more links, more debate, more discussion and more on what’s coming up when you join us there. Topics: twittersocial mediaglobe and maildrug safety (Source: Open Medicine Blog -)
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - January 29, 2014 Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Carlyn Zwarenstein Source Type: blogs