Highlights of the BMC Series – November 2022

As the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI)-based innovations in health and care services become more and more common, it is increasingly pressing to address the ethical challenges associated with AI in healthcare to find appropriate solutions. In the cross-journal BMC collection Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Health and Medicine, we urge the research communities, industry, policy makers and other stakeholders to join forces in tackling the grand challenges of realising Ethical and fair AI in health and medicine.
Soon after the outbreak of COVID-19, the world research community performed a large number of clinical trials about the new disease. Many of them mentioned the use of at least a “standard of care” for disease treatment. However, this is not accurate reporting as a standard of care, by definition, cannot be associated with a new disease. In a study published in BMC Medical Research Methodology last June, Prof Livia Puljak’s research group from the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine and Health Care, at the Catholic University of Croatia, reported and quantified the misuse of the concept of standard of care in COVID-19 clinical trials and found that this affected almost one out of five trials, highlighting the need for greater attention to the terms used when reporting methods, for sake of methodological transparency and replicability.
The BMC Infectious Diseases Associate Editor Dr. Ziad El-Khatib shares is impressions and take home message from the hybrid European Scientific Conference on Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology (ESCAIDE) that took place recently in Stockholm. The content of this blog does not reflect the opinion of any of the institutions he is affiliated with, but rather his personal impressions only.
What are the genomic consequences of human disturbance on the European wildcat? Does football affect your spine? How can we improve the delivery of care for adults with ADHD? What factors influence decision-making on abortion in legally restricted settings? Are there any novel computational methods to better visualise and analyse bacterial pangenomes?