Dear Thomas and all,
Many thanks for your message [https://www.hifa.org/dgroups-rss/new-report-bims-biomed-news] announcing a new report on your excellent service Biomed News.
'Biomed News — or “bims” for short — is a service for experts in biomedical topics as covered by PubMed The experts curate topic-specific reports. In that way, they stay up-to-date with the topic. At the same time, they demonstrate their expertise.'
https://biomed.news/
HIFA benefits directly from two of these 100+ reports, namely bims-librar on Biomedical Librarianship, and bims-skolko on Scholarly Communication. We often forward new papers for further discussion on the HIFA forums.
As you say: "There is great potential for further reports in areas that are of interest to members of HIFA. The first thing that comes to my mind is a report on medical misinformation. It would highlight research done in this area. Get back to me if you have a topic of interest covered by PubMed you would like to report on."
Yes, such a report would be very useful. Do we have any HIFA members who would be willing to consider acting as an expert curator? I cannot take on an extra commitment myself right now, but I would be very happy to help facilitate/support, and I'm sure other HIFA can help.
Another topic that comes to mind is evaluating the impact of (lack of) availability of relevant, reliable healthcare information, particularly on quality of care (across the spectrum, from lay care in the home and community through higher levels of the health system). We have a working group on this topic (currently unsupported but ready to proceed with minimal funding). We know that at least 5 million people die every year due to poor quality care [1]. We understand some of the factors contributing to poor quality care, which include a failure to translate available evidence into actionable policy and practice. A regular bims report looking at quality of care in LMICs, including a focus on the availability and application of evidence, would be a big step forward. HIFA could provide a platform for further discussion of such research, and we would of course engage the authors in this.
[1] Lancet 2018 Nov 17;392(10160):2203-2212. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31668-4. Epub 2018 Sep 5.
Mortality due to low-quality health systems in the universal health coverage era: a systematic analysis of amenable deaths in 137 countries
Margaret E Kruk 1, Anna D Gage 2, Naima T Joseph 3, Goodarz Danaei 2, Sebastián García-Saisó 4, Joshua A Salomon 5
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30195398/
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
