HealthWired is an independent organisation reporting on health, medicine and health policy as they happen around the world, and publishing open access research.
We are not owned by a hospital group, a pharmaceutical company, a government department or a publishing house. Nobody outside our editorial team decides what we cover.
Why we exist
Most health reporting stops at a language border.
An outbreak in Attica, a screening programme in Portugal, a change to vaccination policy in Poland, a trial result in South Africa; each is reported carefully at home, in the local language, and then goes no further. A doctor in Nairobi rarely reads what a Dutch newspaper found last week. A health official in Lisbon rarely sees what Greece learned during its own outbreak.
That gap costs something real. The same questions get answered separately, in a dozen languages, and the answers never meet.
HealthWired exists to move those stories further than they would otherwise travel.
What we cover
Two things, closely related.
The first is health news: disease and outbreaks, cancer, heart and circulation, diabetes and metabolic health, mental health and neurology, women's and family health, nutrition, physical activity, and the research behind all of it.
The second is health policy: how care is funded, who can reach it, what regulators decide, and what happens to patients when a health system is stretched. Policy is often the less visible half of the story, and frequently the half that matters most.
We organise our reporting by region as well as by subject, because where something happens changes what it means.
How we work
We read health coverage in several languages every day. When a story deserves a wider audience, we write about it in English, and publish it here.
Three rules govern that process.
We name the outlet that reported the story first, on every article, and link straight to it. We are a route to good reporting, not a replacement for it.
We do not add to what the original said. No extra claims, no invented context, no sharpening of a cautious finding into a confident one. Where a study says a treatment may reduce a risk, we say may.
We correct openly. Health reporting is only useful if it is accurate, and getting something wrong quietly is worse than getting it wrong loudly.
Open access research
Alongside our reporting, we publish peer-reviewed open access journals.
Open access means what it says: the research is free to read, for anyone, anywhere, with no subscription and no institutional login. A clinician in Kampala should be able to read the same paper as a clinician in Cambridge, on the same day, at the same price of nothing.
Our journals are in preparation. Each one will appear on this site as it launches, with its aims and scope, its editorial board and its submission guidelines.
Where we are
HealthWired is based in Utrecht, in the Netherlands.
We work with contributors, reviewers, translators and editorial partners across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. Reporting on world health from a single city would be a contradiction, so we do not try to.
What we are not
We are not a medical service, and nothing published here is medical advice.
We report on research and on the decisions that shape care. We cannot tell you what any of it means for you specifically, because that depends on your history, your circumstances and your medication, none of which we know. If something you read here seems relevant to your health, take it to a doctor who knows you.
Corrections and contact
If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it. Include the article's web address and what is inaccurate.
Story tips, editorial enquiries and correction requests all reach the same desk, through our contact page. We read everything.