Open engagement with medical meetings

Brian McGowan and Jennifer Smith make the case for accelerating the transfer of new ideas from medial meetings into clinical practice by having open discussions around the meetings between researchers, educators and clinicians.

They list the current methods of information flow from medical meetings highlighting the weaknesses that exist. They propose change to how data is curated after a medical meeting, how societies/associations can engage more openly by hosting 'clearing houses' for data, how investigators should defend their work and explore further research questions with the medical community, how technology should be used to break down knowledge silos, and how local education providers need to feedback to the clearing houses about the dissemination of the new data.

"Some may object to the re-engineering. Some may contest the change in the status quo. But this cannot be about business interests, copyright, or membership value propositions—three challenges that are valid, but can be practically and intelligently addressed though parallel innovation. This re-engineering is first and foremost about improving the flow of medical information."

Re-engineering the Data Stream from Meetings to Medical Practices. Cover story of current issue of Medical Meetings.

This medical society / association led, open publishing model would broaden access to new research findings and perhaps accelerate their transfer to clinical practice. It touches on the Digital Scholarship that Martin Weller has been discussing recently, and, in particular, the reward and tenure that academics work towards and the inevitable comment about open publishing - Yeah, but who pays?

However, as they point out ... not without its challenges.