No late night meetings in smoke filled rooms were needed. Afternoon tea was enough. We knew what we were looking for when we met to discuss the nominations for the BMJ research paper of the year.

Readers had been invited to identify an outstanding paper that had been published in a medical journal between January 2007 and October 2008. Our priority was original research that could markedly improve health and health care and that, ideally, would have direct benefits for patients. Among nominations in the field of science, theory, modelling, and hypothesis we gave priority to applied clinical research.

Fiona Godlee (editor of the BMJ), Trish Groves (deputy editor), and I reviewed the submissions and independently rated our choices. There was considerable overlap and consensus in our triage of the nominated papers, and we selected a total of eight.

We were interested in the paper by Green and colleagues on blood pressure because it integrated home care of a chronic disease, modern technology through the use of the …