Considerable time and effort are invested in randomised controlled trials and long term prospective observational studies to assess the benefits and harms of interventions. However, it is not enough simply to publish high quality research: the challenge is to ensure that clinicians act on the research findings and that this action in turn improves health outcomes.

The BMJ Group’s Getting Research into Practice award celebrates successful initiatives to introduce evidence based improvements in health care that have been completed in the previous two years. The overwhelming number of entries this year (127) indicates the importance placed on successful implementation of good evidence, and we were encouraged by the diversity of projects and their success rates.

Our entries spanned the globe, and examples include an intervention for the primary and secondary prevention of heart disease delivered in community leisure centres in the United Kingdom; an intervention in Australia to disseminate information to improve compliance with antipsychotic treatment, delivered through a multimedia campaign; and a project in India to use indigenous technology to develop cardiovascular implants, thus reducing costs and increasing the number of lifesaving procedures performed.

Our shortlist represents the best in an impressive field: those projects and initiatives with a strong evidence base—both in terms of the rigour of the original …