Three years ago Nature Publishing Group decided to invest heavily in clinical medical publishing. We were well-established in science, particularly biology, and thus our medical focus was on the scientific rather than clinical end of health care. Of course clinical medicine is a very heavily published area and there are many very old and well-established competitors.  (I was the editor of Oxford Medical Publications back in 1975 - and a great job it was.) If we were to succeed in this field we'd have to do things a bit differently and better. Peter Ashman who has driven the project from its inception tells us a bit about it:

'About two and a half years ago, Nature Publishing Group made our first foray into Nature-branded medical publishing with the launch of the first four Nature Clinical Practice (NCP) journals. Since then we've launched a further four with more in the pipeline.

Quite apart from the achievement of launching eight journals in 12 months - an incredible feat in itself - one of the great successes of the Nature Clinical Practice series has been our ability to attract some of the world's leading medical specialists and opinion leaders as Editors-in-Chief and on to Advisory Board members. Doctors such as Vincent T DeVita (NCP Oncology) and Valentin Fuster (NCP Cardiovascular Medicine) are frequently approached by publishers asking them to endorse or to lend their weight to some medical publishing project or other. For NPG, we have been delighted by the willingness of so many key global figures to embrace the NCP concept and to give so freely of their time and knowledge.

One of our Advisory Board members is the pioneering heart surgeon Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub who, despite 'retiring' in 2001 is still a major influencer in the world of heart transplantation. An example of his continuing influence is the recent case of 12 year old Hannah Clarke who suffered from cardiomyopathy (a condition in which the heart can inflame to double its size before, frequently, giving up) on whom Professor Yacoub performed a heart transplant in 1995. During the operation Yacoub took the unplanned decision that, rather than remove the girl's heart, he would leave it in situ and place the donor heart on top - a 'piggy-back' procedure.

This turned out to be a visionary decision as, ten years on, doctors discovered that Hannah's body was rejecting the donor heart and it needed to be removed. Doctors called on Professor Yacoub to come out of retirement and advise on what to do. The decision was taken that Hannah's own heart, having had a 10-year rest, could now be re-started - the operation was undertaken and has proved to be a resounding success with Hannah now being able to stop taking her anti-rejection drugs. Had Professor Yacoub removed Hannah's heart in 1995 as was the norm for this type of condition ten years ago - Hannah would probably be dead by now. You can read more on this heart-warming story on the BBC site and here at CORDIS.

It's an honour for us at Nature to be working with people who make such a difference to our lives.'