More about the next generation advisory panel

The next generation advisory panel is a representative group that ensures that the views and interests of early-career healthcare professionals are represented throughout the planning and delivery of our International Forums in Quality and Safety in Healthcare.

The panel plays a pivotal role in providing support and advice during our planning meetings, and critically, providing a strategic direction for achieving greater representation of early career healthcare professionals during Forums, an essential part of our growing community.

Whether you used a BMJ journal, event, or tool to improve care, advance research, or influence policy, we would like to hear your story. Your experience could be featured on bmjgroup.com or in our next impact report.

Takes two minutes to complete.

Your examples help show how evidence and education become better outcomes for patients, professionals, and communities. They also help others learn what works.

What changed in your setting or community

How BMJ helped (journal, event, course, guideline, BMJ Best Practice clincial decision support, or another tool)

Who benefited (patients, clinicians, students, policy makers)

Any evidence you can share (numbers or qualitative feedback)

Example: “Using BMJ Best Practice, our team reduced time to correct diagnosis for neonatal sepsis.”

BMJ Group has partnered with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to strengthen how people and communities are involved in medical research.

Varied Voices, a free online course developed by NIHR and supported by BMJ Learning, helps healthcare professionals understand how inclusion and diversity improve the quality and impact of research. It offers practical ways to engage underrepresented groups and create more inclusive research environments.

 This collaboration reflects how BMJ Group and NIHR are working together to increase the reach and real-world impact of health and care research.

“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.” Sir William Osler

Who is it for
The course is suitable for all healthcare professionals involved in research, including:
GPs, GP trainees, hospital doctors, foundation doctors, practice and specialist nurses, allied health professionals, physician associates, medical students, and medical trainees.

What you will learn
After completing the course, you will be able to:

• Explain diversity, underrepresented voices, and public involvement in research

• Understand how inclusive practices improve the quality and relevance of health and care research

• Recognise barriers that discourage participation from underrepresented communities

• Apply strategies to make research more inclusive

• Evaluate how effectively your research promotes diversity and inclusion

This is a groundbreaking milestone—not just for transplant medicine, but for how AI can transform clinical research. It all began with a single BMJ publication, shaped by the journal’s exceptional editorial guidance.”

Professor Alexandre Loupy, MD, PhD
Director, Paris Transplant Group

“We desperately need new regulatory pathways that bring investment into transplantation. New therapies are essential to prolong the lives of transplant recipients and take the best care of the gift of life provided by our donors. This step is critical to enabling the dream of ‘One Kidney for Life’ to become a reality.”

Dr Karin Hehenberger
President of Lyfebulb patient engagement platform and a kidney and pancreas transplant recipient

When Dr Clara Maarup Prip, a urologist and gynaecologist at Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark, encountered a rare case of kidney swelling (ureterohydronephrosis) caused by a menstrual cup, it was unlike anything she had seen before.

The menstrual cup had been compressing the ureter where it enters the bladder, leading to a serious but rare complication. After searching the literature and finding only a handful of similar cases worldwide, Dr Maarup Prip documented the case and submitted the report titled, “Ureterohydronephrosis due to a menstrual cup” to BMJ Case Reports, choosing the journal based on its reputation and guidance from experienced colleagues.

We weren’t funded, and it didn’t take long to write. But the response shows just how much value a single case report can bring.”

Dr Clara Maarup Prip
Urologist and gynaecologist, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark

Academic literature rarely cites case reports, but that doesn’t mean they lack tangible impact. It just means they need to be measured differently: not by how they affect a journal’s impact factor, but by the value they bring to clinical education, practice, and patient safety.

As deputy editor of this important journal from the BMJ Group, I can’t help but to stress both the educational importance of case reports, but also their role in shaping often important public health advices.

Rui Amaral Mendes
Professor of the Department of Community Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States

“The submission process was straightforward, and the response was fast. I’d had other papers published with other publishers, and this was by far the smoothest experience.”

Dr Clara Maarup Prip
Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark

How BMJ Group is helping deliver the NHS 10-year health plan

The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) 10 year health plan (Fit for the Future), published in July 2025, is the blueprint for transforming England’s health service. It focuses on three radical shifts: moving care from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention. It also calls for higher quality standards, a stronger workforce, innovation, and financial stability.

It is urgent work. Demand is rising, waiting lists are long, and staff are stretched. The Plan states that bold reform is needed.

At BMJ Group, we do not endorse the plan itself. But we do stand shoulder to shoulder with the NHS, supporting its staff and systems as they confront rising demand, long waiting lists, and unrelenting pressures.

At BMJ Group, our longstanding vision of creating a healthier world aligns directly with many of these priorities. Our tools, research, and education programmes make a measurable difference. Here’s how:

The NHS ten year plan dissected

Our expertise spans research, education, and clinical decision support. Our journals provide the evidence base that informs national policy and public health initiatives, for instance:

Additionally, BMJ Best Practice translates this knowledge into practical guidance, offering clinicians prevention strategies and patient-facing resources for a wide range of conditions.

A recent BMJ analysis found that in 2016–17, almost 1.5 million emergency admissions could have been avoided with stronger preventive care outside hospitals. More recently, BMJ research on HPV vaccination has helped strengthen global calls to eliminate cervical cancer, influencing both UK policy and WHO targets. The study published in The BMJ found that England’s national HPV vaccination programme led to a staggering 90% reduction in cervical cancer risk among women vaccinated at ages 12–13, compared to unvaccinated peers. This benefit was seen across socioeconomic groups, making a powerful equity case for the vaccine’s universal rollout. Public health leaders in the UK have built on this evidence to set a national elimination goal. NHS England, for instance, is aiming to eliminate cervical cancer entirely, backed by these compelling data and reinforced by BMJ findings.

The NHS long-term plan calls for safer, more transparent, and continually improving services. Quality improvement (QI) is central to this ambition, ensuring that healthcare is modern, efficient, and capable of delivering better patient outcomes.

One recent UK project designed and implemented a new management pathway for rib fractures. It shows how a pathway, which incorporated BMJ Best Practice and local hospital needs, was designed and implemented. It ultimately improved the quality of care. This shows how BMJ Best Practice can help equip frontline staff with the right knowledge and tools to deliver safer, more consistent, and higher-quality care.

The plan has much to say about training roles, the use of AI in education, and supporting a wide variety of clinical careers.

The plan aims to make the NHS the most AI-enabled health system in the world, embracing genomics, robotics, and wearable tech.

The NHS 10-year plan can only succeed if frontline staff have fast access to evidence, the skills to apply it, and systems that work with them, not against them.

BMJ Group provides those essentials – we always have, and always will. Through evidence, education, and innovation, we are helping the NHS deliver a service that is safe, sustainable, and fit for the future.

At the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), tomorrow’s doctors are learning to think critically, act decisively, and publish research with global impact. By embedding BMJ Group’s evidence based tools directly into teaching, clinical rotations, and research training, UNAM is reshaping medical education and strengthening healthcare outcomes across Latin America.

UNAM is Latin America’s largest and most prestigious university, with over 380,000 students enrolled across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and is responsible for producing around a third of all Mexican research. Its Faculty of Medicine is one of the oldest in the Americas, and today, it trains thousands of healthcare professionals annually.

Facing rising demands, including the burden of non-communicable diseases, which now account for three quarters of deaths nationally, relies on BMJ Group to move learning beyond the classroom, creating measurable skills in research, clinical judgment, and open publishing.

Since 2010, the UNAM faculty of medicine has successfully integrated the Group’s resources into its competency based curriculum. Research to Publication (R2P) has expanded research capability, offering structured training and mentorship. 

Within 12 months of completing the programme:

At the bedside, BMJ Best Practice has become the backbone of clinical teaching. Over the past two years, UNAM’s analytics show students accessed it daily on rotations to check diagnoses and treatment plans, averaging more than 550 page views a day. App use consistently outperforms peer institutions, with the most viewed topics reflecting Mexico’s prevalent conditions and supporting safer decisions guided by best evidence during rotations.

At UNAM, BMJ Group’s tools connect the entire pathway from learning to clinical decision making to publishing research. Students progress seamlessly: applying evidence at the point of care with BMJ Best Practice, reinforcing core skills via BMJ Learning, and advancing to authorship with Research to Publication.

In 2024, UNAM became BMJ Group’s first Read and Publish partner in Latin America. This landmark agreement expanded open access opportunities for faculty and students, raising UNAM’s global research visibility while further embedding evidence based practice.

With BMJ Group, our students and faculty move seamlessly from learning to bedside to publication.

Dr Ana Carolina Sepúlveda Vildósola, 
Dean, faculty of medicine, UNAM, Mexico

In 2024, UNAM became BMJ Group’s first Read and Publish partner in Latin America. This landmark agreement expanded open access opportunities for faculty and students, raising UNAM’s global research visibility while further embedding evidence-based practice.

For decades, research publishing followed a fixed script. Researchers investigated. Publishers validated, polished and shared their findings. Patients, if mentioned, were the subjects of the research, not contributors to it.

That model is shifting. Across the publishing industry, there’s growing recognition that people with lived experience of illness, disability or care are more than passive recipients of information. They’re experts in their own right — and they’re helping to make research more relevant, ethical and trustworthy.

This isn’t about tokenistic patient stories or soft human interest. It’s about integrating meaningful public perspectives into publishing systems and processes, and asking how we might build platforms that are not just academically rigorous but genuinely useful to those most affected by them.

Emma Doble, patient and public strategy editor at BMJ Group, contributed a feature article, Putting patients on the page, to InPublishing in the July/August 2025 issue.

The logic is simple. Research that affects people’s lives should reflect their realities. Patients, carers and members of the public bring unique insights that researchers, no matter how expert, may not anticipate. They may ask different questions, highlight overlooked issues, and challenge assumptions that seem obvious within clinical or academic circles.

At BMJ Group, we’ve worked with patients for over two decades and see this repeatedly. For example, The BMJ journal’s patient reviewers have improved papers by flagging that clinical definitions of ‘quality of life’ don’t always align with what matters most to people living with a condition. As far back as 2001, one reviewer challenged the framing of a paper on diabetes that focused on blood sugar control but overlooked fatigue and mental health, two issues patients consistently rank as more impactful. That input led to a more balanced, and ultimately more useful, revision.

Patient insights also strengthen ethical rigour. They help identify unintended harms — such as language that stigmatises or alienates — and can prevent publication of research that may lack true relevance to those it intends to help.

Of course, it’s easy to gesture towards “patient involvement” without changing much. Real integration requires intention, infrastructure and culture change.

At The BMJ, patient and public reviewers have been a formal part of the peer review process since 2014. Every research paper is reviewed not just by academic experts but also by someone with relevant lived experience. Patients also sit on the journal’s editorial board, and our international patient advisory panel helps shape our patient and public partnership strategy.

Patient and public involvement is now being adopted more widely across the business. For all our journals, we now require all submitting authors to indicate how they involved patients and the public in their research in a Patient and Public Involvement statement, holding researchers accountable for their claims of “co-production”. Several other journals across the BMJ Group portfolio now include patient and public reviewers, including BMJ Open, BMJ Global Health, BMJ Health & Care Informatics, and RMD Open (Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Diseases).

But patient insight goes beyond research publishing. On BMJ Best Practice, our clinical decision-support tool, content is updated to more explicitly support shared decision-making. This includes clear summaries of the benefits and harms of interventions and flags when patient preferences should guide decisions. The goal is to empower not just clinicians but patients themselves and acknowledge that both types of expertise matter.

Public trust in science has become more fragile, especially after the pandemic, when people were bombarded with evolving advice and conflicting information. Publishing that brings patients into the process can help repair that trust.

Involving patients in research design and review, and clearly stating how they were involved,  signals openness, humility and respect. It shows readers that this is not research done on people, but research done with and for them.

Almost 90% of research papers first submitted to The BMJ in 2024 and sent out for peer review were also sent to a patient and public reviewer for their opinion.

You don’t need to be a medical publisher to apply these ideas. Any publisher that creates content with real-world consequences, from education to policy to social care, can benefit from integrating lived experience. Here’s how to start:

1. Bring patients into peer review: The BMJ provides training and support for patient and public reviewers, and publishes guidance on how to offer meaningful feedback. Their input focuses on clarity, relevance and usefulness. This model is scalable and replicable across sectors.
2. Embed lived experience into editorial boards and advisory panels: Patients on the group’s editorial board are not figureheads. They have a genuine say in strategic direction, topic selection and policy decisions. Publishers in other sectors, for example, social justice or education, could benefit from a similar approach.
3. Use clear, inclusive language: Patient reviewers often challenge jargon or unnecessarily technical phrasing. One small but powerful example: shifting from “subjects” to “participants” or “people living with…” immediately changes the tone. BMJ Group encourages all authors to write with a non-specialist audience in mind — not to simplify science, but to broaden its reach.
4. Show your working: More than half of our journal portfolio, including The BMJ, publishes research involving patients. This research includes a public involvement statement explaining how and when patients were involved. This increases transparency and gives readers confidence in the process.
5. Support cultural change internally: For many editors and publishers, working with patient partners is new. We provide training to support staff in collaborating respectfully, listening actively, and welcoming challenges. Mistakes are shared openly so others can learn.
6. Build feedback loops: Patient contributors are regularly asked how the process can improve. One recent outcome: simplifying reviewer instructions and offering a guide to peer review, and optional peer buddies for new reviewers unfamiliar with academic publishing.

What we’re seeing is not just a tweak to publishing workflows. It’s a value shift from control to collaboration, authority to authenticity.

When publishing includes patients, it becomes more than a vehicle for transmitting research. It becomes a mechanism for shaping it, challenging it, and ensuring it lands where it matters. It helps bridge the gap between evidence and empathy, and creates space for more equitable and inclusive conversations.

For publishers, this is both a responsibility and an opportunity.

• Responsibility: Failing to involve people in decisions that affect them risks irrelevance or harm.
• Opportunity: When we open the door to lived experience, we make our content, and our impact, far stronger.

This transition is ongoing. We’re learning, adapting, and listening, and while progress has been slow, the direction is clear. Publishers who choose this path will not just improve their content but also build stronger, more meaningful connections with the communities they serve.

In 2023, BMJ Group supported For Patients, By Patients (PxP), the first fully patient-led global research conference. Designed and run by The BMJ patient advisors, PxP proved the power of lived experience to shape research agendas.

A BMJ Open study authored by Dawn Richards and colleagues, ‘Patient engagement in a Canadian health research funding institute: implementation and impact’, confirms patient-led initiatives like PxP integrate patient insight effectively into both research and policy.

PxP set a new precedent: patients aren’t just participants, they’re experts.

In 2024, BMJ Group funded 64 patients and residents from Newham, East London, to attend the London International Forum on Quality and Safety to bridge the gap between local communities and global health systems.

Their presence ensured that local voices shaped key conversations on healthcare improvement. This inclusive action deepened community trust, expanded relevance, and empowered marginalised groups to co-create better care.

To tackle misinformation and improve care, Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) gives patients direct access to trustworthy health information. With support from BMJ Best Practice, healthcare library teams are equipping citizens with clear, evidence-based patient leaflets used in consultations nationwide.

This national initiative is changing the dynamic between patients and clinicians. It enables more informed conversations, supports shared decisions, and reduces avoidable tests and treatments. Encouraged by the success of BMJ Best Practice, the HSE is considering expanding its library services to enhance patient education and advocacy further.

In June 2025, a special set of articles was published in a dedicated The BMJ Lived Experience collection. It showcases the value, competency, and capability of people with lived experiences in improving healthcare and health, and calls on health leaders at all levels to make participatory healthcare “business as usual”.

Examples to celebrate include the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s strategy to involve patients “in every step of the regulatory journey” and a new law in Brazil mandating the inclusion of people with lived experience in decision making about drugs for the public health system.

To this end, the World Health Organization created a practical guide to including lived experience in healthcare, setting the expectation that nothing about people with a health condition should be decided without their involvement.

Last year’s World Health Assembly also passed a resolution that commits governments to empowering and funding people, communities, and civil society to participate in decision-making processes at all levels of the health system. Governments must also show progress every two years.

BMJ China and West China Hospital’s Alzheimer’s disease imaging roundtable, December 2024

BMJ Group contributes to the progress of health research, policy, and practice through trusted editorial leadership and a vast global network of experts. We run over 20 roundtables, 100+ webinars, dozens of regional and global panel discussions, and large-scale forums yearly. These clinically relevant platforms successfully connect our journal communities with the evidence-based insight of thought leaders and healthcare decision-makers. Our events are not just discussions; they are accelerators of change.

The Alzheimer’s disease imaging roundtable, hosted in Chengdu in partnership with the Department of Radiology at West China Hospital of Sichuan University and the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry (JNNP), exemplifies how we deliver this value in action. 

Held in December 2024, the roundtable explored how brain scans can help safely introduce new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. These treatments offer fresh hope for millions of people, but they can also cause side effects in the brain, known as amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA). These changes can only be seen on MRI scans and may be dangerous if missed. That’s why high-quality imaging is so important. It catches these changes early and ensures patients get the safest, most effective care.

“The consensus we’ve reached on harmonising ARIA imaging protocols could reshape how Alzheimer’s disease is diagnosed and monitored, not just in China, but worldwide.”

Professor Na Hu, chief radiologist, Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, China