Abstract
Summer is here and brings a Brexit with it. The landscape for health and science in the UK feels vulnerable if you believe the warnings of our editorialists in a recent issue of JRSM. 1 At times of vulnerability, we question our purpose. While Brexit creates no immediate issues for JRSM, what does the future hold?
First, articles from international authors remain welcome at JRSM despite the journal’s UK focus. If what you say has relevance to medicine and health policy in the UK, we’ll be interested to consider it. For example, Thailand’s experience of attempting to improve primary care through financial incentives is based on the UK’s model, but customising the policy for Thailand now offers lessons for us back in the UK. Authors from Birmingham University, NICE International, and Thailand’s Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program tell the story. 2
Another piece that brings us lessons from international experience is an essay by Kathrin Cresswell and Aziz Sheikh. 3 Health information technology is one of the fastest growing global industries, and the authors consider the likely impact of five technologies: apps and wearables, robotics and automation, cloud computing, smart health and smart living, and learning health systems built on innovative use of digital data. The future, they say, is likely to be one of ‘more and more global provision of care’.
Second, JRSM will seek to publish more editorials and shorter commentaries. When Internet publishing first took hold, the mantra was to publish shorter articles for the web and longer in print – but that thinking has flipped, certainly for scientific journals. Journals that survive and thrive will increasingly be pithy, readable digests of longer publications online. Many of these shorter pieces, we hope, will arise from the many excellent lectures and meetings that take place each day at the Royal Society of Medicine.
Third, in tandem with the drive for more shorter pieces, JRSM will retain its scientific core. We will remain selective in the research articles that we publish but as the quality of these papers rises, JRSM will aim to publish higher research methodologies. To aid in the assessment of these papers, JRSM has appointed a statistical adviser for the first time. Meanwhile, our excellent series of articles from the James Lind Library will continue to dissect the history of research methodologies.
Above all, JRSM remains your journal. In these times of upheaval in the profession and Europe, our pages are open to you to drive forward the debate on clinical medicine and health policy.