As we move towards our first live events of 2023 (webcasts for our LATAM cardio-diabetes HCP colleagues, and the annual CDNATL meeting in London) we wanted to pause for a celebration.
2023 marks the 200th birthday of The Lancet medical journal, and our good friends at Elsevier will be celebrating this remarkable milestone throughout the year. The Lancet was founded by Thomas Wakley in 1823 with the vision that it should be more than a medical journal by driving social and political change through advancing medical research and science, for the greater good. It’s a vision that the current team share today with a clear commitment to helping better science create better lives.
Science for a wider audience
In their first editorial of the year the Lancet team have reflected on the original simple aim of Thomas Wakley, which was to publish reports of metropolitan hospital lectures for the benefit of a wider audience. An audience which was national (city and country doctors) and global (“Colonial Practitioners” he said — “a group for whom we must make our own accounting”).
Little did we at At the Limits realise in the mid-1990’s that we were setting out on a journey similar in concept to that of Thomas Wakley, to make the scientific discoveries pioneered by leading global experts available to the medical community. But in addition to that, to make the knowledge available to Wakley’s wider audience, members of the public whose interest and fascination with the science of medicine was often driven by more personal and immediate healthcare need.
By necessity, our meetings are attended by audiences of registered healthcare professionals, but we can provide archives of scientific content, sanitised of pharmaceutical industry product references, for the benefits of other interested parties. We hope that in some part we can, through our partnership with the Lancet, be used as an instrument to accelerate action to advance health and health equity.
Open Dialogue
Our events take place throughout the year and via www.opendialogue.health, our new medical education hub, we’ll be making that science available to an ever-growing community.
The Lancet’s actual birthday is October 7th, but here at ATL we’ve all agreed to start scoffing cake from today onwards, just to make sure we’re in great shape for the big day!
