Supplements and newsletters
NHS newsletter
This was a good example of a single sponsor newsletter which addresses a broad range of issues affecting key therapeutic areas without attempting any promotion. The aim was to keep the field force informed about service developments that impact on their activities - for example, non-medical prescribing. Topicality and clarity were particularly important and I included web links so the newsletter was itself an information resource.
Therapeutics bulletins for the NHS
A bulletin means quite a workload and regular publication can soon become a burden on short-staffed units. When an NHS therapeutics centre was hit by staff shortages, they asked me to write their current awareness bulletins for primary care. The editorial process worked surprisingly well. I'd get a package of papers in the post and, after some more research, write a first draft. This was error-checked, then reviewed by four or five clinicians and their comments were returned to me to write the second draft. Depending on the pace of clinical developments and how controversial the review was, we could get through four or five drafts before we were done. We covered a wide range of new drugs and therapeutic areas. COX-2s were a nightmare: six drafts in four months!
Working with KOLs
These are busy people who don't always share our enthusiasm for word counts or deadlines. I'd done a pretty complex draft on the use of biologicals which three KOLs commented on and enhanced. We went way over the word count (and back again) and through several deadlines but it was worth it and we ended up (after a mega-edit) with a good quality supplement.
This is not just aspirin, it's...
For such an everyday drug there's a lot of technical wizardry about aspirin. I wrote a supplement for the Aspirin Foundation and the British Journal of Cardiology based on presentations at a small meeting of specialists. They'd convened to consider the role of low-dose aspirin in preventing cardiovascular events and mechanisms of aspirin 'resistance'. Turns out that's a misnomer: a platelet has more than one pathway up its sleeve.