Sue Wilson

HonMFPH, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology
Editorial Board Member for BMC Health Service Research, BMC Public Health and BMC Research Notes

I am Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Birmingham, the Trials Director of the West Midlands Primary Care Clinical Research and Trials Unit (PC-CRTU), a member of the National Cancer Research Institute Colorectal Clinical Studies Group and lead the Cancer Research Team, based in the School of Health and Population Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

Primary Care has an important role in the early diagnosis of cancer and in the delivery of population based screening programmes. The Cancer Research Team's current activity is focussed on work relating to the early diagnosis of cancer (particularly colorectal and cervical cancer) and the delivery of community based randomised controlled trials.

We are using BMC journals more and more. Initially we saw them mainly as a way of ensuring that the protocols for our research studies were in the public domain (and that we had pre-specified analysis plans). But the relatively short time from submission to publication, the focus on scientific rigour and the benefits of open-access to our research has meant we are now publishing much of our work through BMC.