Doctors online: “Like flies to honey”
BMJ 2015; 350 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h2767 (Published 26 May 2015) Cite this as: BMJ 2015;350:h2767
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Dear Helen,
Thanks for your response. I am the bearer of good news. We just launched. the Android app.
Find out more at these links
http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/bmj-app/bmj-android-app
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bmj.journal.row
We're just planning a more formal launch., and some targeted communication at you and others who have rightly chased us on this. Sorry it took so long. Hope you like it,
David
Competing interests: No competing interests
Hurray for the innovators at the BMJ! The BMJ has been available via ipad for well over a year. Yet my repeated enquiries about an android app all receive the same answer: watch this space. Many of us use android and it would save so much paper - please innovate!
Competing interests: No competing interests
The paper raises the interesting issue of whether the main peer-reviewed papers have evolved in step with the publishing medium.
But rapid responses, are definitely a huge change from the situation before the online world came into existence - rapid responses are much more numerous than the earlier printed letters, and are indeed rapid. They allow for an almost immediate analysis of 'intricate and technical issues' which arise from the original paper. And although I usually try to restrain myself from doing this, it is possible to effectively 'debate a point almost in real time with another individual' using rapid responses, as I did recently during discussion of the Montgomery ruling.
I also suspect, that rapid responses can 'escape from the restraints of evidence-based research', and from the possible restrictive effects of peer review [which might tend to 'reinforce uniformity'], and therefore rapid responses allow for some really interesting discussions of issues 'at the edges of medicine': for example where medicine and law interact, or where patients and clinicians might see things significantly differently. 'Primary' papers are usually either a description of experiment and observation, or describe 'one opinion': but rapid responses, are much more of a 'debate'. Personally I find experiment and observation informative - but I sometimes find debate, fascinating as well as informative.
Rapid responses, are wonderful !
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: Doctors online: “Like flies to honey”
I have just read your article in the BMJ (print version) announcing your 20th Anniversary of the BMJ.com. I remember the launch very well and seems like yesterday! I had a call in the June of that year from Alan Walker, then digital sales manager, to ask if we had an OTC medicine digital ad he could put up on the website for free for the launch as all the POM medicine Pharma Companies were nervous about advertising on a website that could be accessed by the public (a practice of course that is now acceptable). We handled the Nurofen account so we supplied a Nurofen digital ad and the client (then Crookes Healthcare) and ourselves were very excited about being the first advertiser on the website. 20 years on, we are still advertising on the BMJ.com. and the site continues to evolve!
Happy birthday and best wishes
Sue Rand
Client Services Director
Wrigley Foster Media Direct Limited
Competing interests: No competing interests