Having problems with message search?
History of the Society Newsletter - From 1986 to 2005
I’ve been having a clear out of my office and in the process I’ve been looking at my archive of society newsletters. The first issue of the newsletter appeared in November 1986 -- nearly twenty years ago. In that time period, there have been 47 issues. Mark Leaning (Clinical Research Unit at UCL) edited the first 14 issues. When he became chair of BMiS, the present editor, Jeannette Murphy, succeeded him. From 2000, we’ve managed to publish four issues a year. During that time, we’ve had a number of editorial boards, and several guest editors.
We began to publish an online version of the newsletter in 2002. There are currently fourteen pdf versions of the newsletter available on the Society website. (Issues 35 to 47; and issue 29)
We’ve polled members in the past to find out their views as to the sort of content they’d like us to provide. For example, we asked whether we should continue to have a diary. To our surprise, the majority of those who replied were in favour of retaining the diary. We also asked members whether we should continue to publish a hard copy and again we received a resounding `yes’.
From time to time we’ve run a number of special issues covering topics such as:
·
·
·
We’ve also published interviews with some of the early pioneers in medical computing and medical informatics.
As we approach our twentieth anniversary, it seems a good time to again solicit your views. We’d like to hear from members as to how they see the future of the newsletter. Do people read it? Should we continue to produce a paper version? How could it be improved?
Last but not least, I’m about to dispose of all the old copies of the newsletter. If anyone would like a set, please let me know. (I don’t have complete back runs.) I may have to ask for a contribution towards postage, depending on the demand.
Jeannette Murphy
Send Email