March 2026

This month: how a clinical entrepreneur helped a 13 year old in Malawi hear again, what a BMJ Innovations editor-in-chief looks for in a paper, and the digital health research shaping your practice. (Including paywalled articles that we've opened until 10 April 2026)

Worth your time: does ambient voice technology really save clinicians' time? An editorial in BMJ Digital Health & AI says we need better evidence. 

This issue of BMJ Future Health is supported by Heidi Health and Learner+. These companies have had no influence over the editorial content of this newsletter.

Community spotlight:
Meet Dr Tamsin Holland Brown

Three years ago, Modesta Bene, aged 13, failed her school exams in rural Malawi. No one knew it yet, but Modesta was capable. She just couldn't hear.

In January 2020, a Malawian doctor diagnosed Modesta as having glue ear and perforated eardrums. He fitted a bone conduction headset invented by Tamsin Holland Brown, a paediatrician based in Cambridge, UK. The device became so important to Modesta that when it broke, she fixed it with layers of tape. It did the job.

Glue ear, where fluid fills the middle ear, often resolves if identified and treated but can cause lifelong deafness if missed. Middle ear disease affects half of Malawian young people with hearing loss, according to research published in PLOS One in 2017. 

Bene has passed every exam since using the headset, though her progress could also reflect natural development, better teaching, and changes in her hearing loss. She is now on track to become a midwife.

Holland Brown, founder of Hear Glue Ear, told BMJ Future Health that she had wanted to solve a problem she had observed in clinics: glue ear. She said she had managed a patient who was almost misdiagnosed as having a learning disability. The problem hit closer to home when her daughter Lilac developed the condition too.

Holland Brown, now co-clinical lead for the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme (CEP), is adamant that publishing in BMJ Innovations in 2021 changed her company's trajectory and carried her work from the UK into African countries. At the time, she wanted global reach but knew little about writing an academic paper.  A call with Ashley McKimm and later iterations guided by Helen Surana, both co-editors-in-chief of BMJ Innovations, produced a paper that at least 30 news outlets covered, including the Independent and Daily Mail. The projects in Africa that supported young people like Bene followed, Holland Brown said.

Holland Brown said her experience is not the norm. The CEP receives thousands of applications yearly, yet a route from invention to academia barely exists, she said.

"Another pathway needs to be open to clinicians who are innovators first. They see the problem, and they want to solve it," Holland Brown said. "As a clinician, you want global reach. You want your colleagues to recognise the work."

Holland Brown said Bene told her she wants to become a midwife to give back to the community that supported her.

Competing interests: Tamsin Holland Brown is a member of the BMJ Future Health advisory committee, founder of Hear Glue Ear, co-clinical lead for the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, a member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health digital committee, and a member of the WHO World Hearing Forum.

Getting published: ask editor Helen Surana

  • What was your journey to becoming co-editor-in-chief of BMJ Innovations?
    I’m a classic portfolio doctor, and have spent a lot of my career at BMJ Group. I’ve worked on BMJ Learning, BMJ Best Practice, and more recently building the Future Health event and content. During the pandemic, I became involved with BMJ Innovations as a deputy editor, running a series of webinars on healthcare innovation for the journal in China, and launching a podcast. I’ve been co-editor-in-chief with Ashley McKimm for the last year or so.
  • What makes you say yes to a paper in the first ten minutes?
    Fortunately, my job is more like knowing when to say "maybe". Very few papers come to us fully formed. After a "maybe," we depend on our peer reviewers to advise authors and editors on whether it could become a yes. BMJ Innovations is such a diverse journal, with submissions from a huge range of specialties and beyond, that finding the right peer reviewers can take some work.
  • What should a first-time author do differently from what they think they should do?
    Read the journal's information for authors about format and scope. Ninety per cent of getting to peer review is about submitting in the right format to the right journal. 
    The other thing is that if you are publishing something as an afterthought, it is really obvious. The best manuscripts are the ones that have been thought about from the beginning of the research or piece of thinking. 
    My pet peeve is people who have done an interesting thing or had an interesting meeting and then thought about writing it up. Much better to think about the reporting of the activity before you start.
  • What's one paper you edited that changed how you think about innovation?
    We get a number of really interesting proposals for discussion pieces. One of them was this article by Naughton et al on stigmatisation for digital health innovators (BMJ Innovations 2024). Implementation is a huge issue for innovation, and understanding professional roles and boundaries in the health service is an important part of that. 
    Alongside all the exciting new ideas we get to report on, this sort of deep thinking is really fascinating to me.

Your reading list

The digital health and AI trends that will affect your practice

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