BMJ releases 2022 impact report

BMJ has announced the release of its 2022 impact report. The second annual report highlights how the global healthcare knowledge provider continued to create a positive impact on the healthcare community worldwide, during the last year.

The BMJ outline the report highlights as follows:

The report summarises the positive impact made by the organisation from the middle of 2021 to June 2022, in –

• improving transparency in research, clinical practice, and healthcare systems;
• bringing patient views and experiences to the forefront to help generate the best evidence;
• strengthening ethics within the publishing community;
• helping hospitals rise to the comorbidities challenge, and,
• using BMJ’s health data and economics expertise to improve health systems

Chris Jones, BMJ chief executive officer, said: “Everything we do at BMJ is to support health professionals to improve their practice and deliver the best care through better evidence, decisions, and systems. We are determined to help lead the way toward achieving a healthier world, and our impact report outlines the progress we’re making. This is a constant process, and we will never stop seeking to improve the impact we have.”

Better evidence

Reflecting on BMJ’s global impact: The world’s social and economic crises and the pandemic have shown there are many people who want trusted, reliable information and evidence. We believe that this is one of the reasons that people are turning to The BMJ in growing numbers. www.bmj.com saw the number of active users grow from 22 million in 2019 to 31 million in 2020, and 49 million last year.

Improving transparency in research, clinical practice, and healthcare systems: The pandemic highlighted the danger of misinformation. The BMJ’s investigation reported poor clinical trial research practices at a contract research company helping to carry out a Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial. The BMJ’s investigation raised important questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight at the US Food and Drug Administration.

The BMJ’s investigation reporting poor clinical trial practices is one of the best read and most widely shared articles in the history of scientific publishing. The financial disclosures of members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) were published for the first time, as a result of the articles.

Accelerating evidence into practice through trustworthy recommendations During the pandemic, BMJ developed a new article type; a living systematic review and network meta-analysis to track the latest trials evaluating drug therapies and is updated as new evidence emerges.

BMJ’s living World Health Organization (WHO) guideline on drugs to prevent covid-19 uses emerging evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) on drugs to prevent covid-19 and complements the living WHO guideline on drugs to treat covid-19.

Strengthening ethics within the publishing community: BMJ’s research integrity and publication ethics team’s work involves developing policies to improve the integrity of BMJ’s content, voicing those policies, providing training for editors and influencing publication ethics beyond BMJ at conferences, and participating in publishing committees.

The team makes regular contributions to guidelines and discussion documents created by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). We are also co-authors on official COPE guidance for editors and publishers addressing manipulation of the publication process. We also recently took part in developing disclaimers and guidance on how to deal with historically offensive content. In 2021, BMJ’s visual summary on categories of harmful content was featured in the COPE Webinar on issues around historical offensive content; its damage and how to mitigate it.

Better decisions

Helping hospitals rise to the comorbidities challenge: Launched in 2020, the unique BMJ Best Practice Comorbidities Manager provides guidance on the treatment of a patient’s acute condition alongside their pre-existing comorbidities. It is the only point of care tool to support the management of single conditions and patients with more complex comorbidities.

In recent surveys, BMJ Best Practice was rated very highly. It scored particularly well for ease of use, navigation, and quality of content.

• 90% of surveyed users said BMJ Best Practice has had an impact on their clinical practice
• 82% of users believed that BMJ Best Practice helped them improve patient care
• 78% believed that BMJ Best Practice saved them time
• 90% felt that BMJ Best Practice helped or would have helped to reassure them that their practice was correct, or would have helped them to improve their practice.

Delivering the most relevant expertise to tackle the common conditions in South Asia. The courses delivered by BMJ India41 enhance clinical practice by upgrading the knowledge of more than five million health professionals across South Asia. Delegates attend from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and Myanmar.

88.9% of survey respondents said BMJ India webinars have had an impact on their clinical practice.

Better systems

Using BMJ’s health data and economics expertise to improve health systems: The BMJ Technology Assessment Group (BMJ-TAG) conducts health research for a range of institutions. Their work has led to some revolutionary changes to the way patients receive treatment through the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). Over the past year, the group independently assessed the use of new treatments for ovarian cancer and other life threatening conditions.Over 16,000 patients benefit from improved outcomes as a direct result of research conducted by BMJ-TAG.

Creating dialogues that shape frameworks and inform policies: In February 2022, BMJ supported the WHO and the National Academy of Medicine in a joint call to urge social media companies to incorporate the global principles of identifying credible sources of health information in their guidelines, safety policies, and enforcement to protect public health. The principles state that sources should be science-based, objective, transparent, and accountable to be considered credible.

The call was followed up with us convening 15 global health experts to review whether the principles and attributes identified in a paper published by the NAM: Identifying Credible Sources of Health Information in Social Media: Principles and Attributes could be applied by social media companies globally. WHO and NAM urged technology companies to adopt these principles in January 2022, as part of a regular WHO ‘Technology Task Force’ meeting: a permanent group of representatives from more than 40 major technology companies, including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, TikTok, and YouTube.

To read the report in full click here.