In the Bookstores - Volume 22, Issue

The Spirit Level

Ever had a ‘ping’ moment? This book might have been mine. I'm not a natural pessimist, but Western society today seems less cohesive and people more materialistic, stressed, unhealthy, and unhappy than in times gone by. Wealth and s…

Selling evidence over the counter: Do community pharmacists engage with evidence-based medicine? - Volume 22, Issue

Community pharmacy has been recently criticised for selling products which do not have a rational or robust evidence base. Available evidence suggests that pharmacists understand and are willing to embrace the concepts of evidence-based medicine…

The EMWA Budapest Working Group: A 2-year collaboration to make recommendations for aligning the ICH E3 guideline with current practice and developing clinical study protocol guidance - Volume 23, Issue

International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) E6 and ICH E3, developed nearly 20 years ago, are the current regulatory guidance documents for developing clinical study protocols (CSPs) and clinical study reports (CSRs). Ambiguity in the…

Medical decision making at the individual and population level: The increasing role of evidence - Volume 30, Issue

The major change in medical decision making over the last 50 years has been the realisation that treatment decisions would be improved if doctors’ existing knowledge was supplemented by evidence generated systematically through health services…

Cost comparison of salaried and freelance medical writers working in Europe - Volume 23, Issue

This is the first systematic comparison of the costs of salaried and freelance medical writers working in Europe. In the absence of official figures for the total costs of employment, we make reasoned assumptions, using mean base figures for…

Package leaflets for medication in the EU: The possibility of integrating patients’ perspectives in a regulated genre? - Volume 24, Issue

Package leaflets (PLs) have been legally required to accompany medicines in the EU since 1999. Despite the best intentions and efforts, however, they are generally not well-received by the public for whom they are intended. This paper picks up on…

A stroll through the medical blogosphere - Volume 24, Issue

Medical blogs are a very popular way of communicating health-related information. They can be written by medical professionals or laypeople, and topics include diseases, procedures, health policies, and personal topics such as everyday experiences.…

The illusion of certainty and the certainty of illusion - Volume 25, Issue

Critical thinking is necessary to edit a scientific article. However, in addition to questions about the language, we can also question the assumptions, documentation, and implications of the research, in a process I call “analytical editing.” A…

Catching the wave of lifestyle medicine - Volume 28, Issue

Non-communicable diseases (degenerative chronic diseases) are wreaking havoc on human health, causing 70% of deaths world - wide, but lifestyle medicine is ready to tackle them by helping people change the habits behind them. A new medical…

President's Message - Volume 26, Issue

Dear EMWA Members, What an exciting and proud moment this is for me to serve as President of an association that I have seen grow in professionalism over the years since first be - coming an EMWA member in 1996! We have come a long way since those…