BMJ Group Lifetime Achievement Award

Professor Douglas Altman

The quality of worldwide health research owes a great debt to Douglas Altman, one of the world’s leading experts in health research methodology, statistics, and reporting.

Professor Altman has been the director of the Centre for Statistics in Medicine in Oxford since it was established in 1995 and has directed the Medical Statistics Group of Cancer Research UK since 1988. He previously worked for the Medical Research Council for 11 years.

Widely published, Professor Altman has more than 450 scientific publications to his name, many aimed at clarifying statistical ideas for medical researchers and 11 of which have gathered over 1000 citations each, including his popular textbook Practical Statistics for Medical Research.

Professionally his interests include the use and misuse of statistics in medical research, studies of prognosis, randomised trials, and systematic reviews.

Professor Altman is generally considered to have made a major contribution to improving the quality of research reporting in medical literature, and he is one of the leaders of the CONSORT reporting guideline group.

Professor Altman and his colleagues have been involved in the development of several other reporting guidelines, such as STROBE (for reporting observational studies) and PRISMA (for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses).

He also founded the EQUATOR Network, an international initiative providing online resources, education, and training for authors, peer reviewers, and editors. …