Open Pharma monthly update | January 2026

Welcome to the first edition of the Open Pharma monthly update! Each month, our team curates the most important news, milestones and insights from the Open Pharma community and beyond, delivering them straight to your inbox.

In this issue, we are excited to highlight the key decisions from the Open Pharma 2025 AGM, the latest insights from our topic meeting on Registered Reports and the big ideas that emerged from Open Pharma Day.

Open Pharma updates

Open Pharma 2025 AGM

• Open Pharma held its 2025 Annual General Meeting (AGM) in November, at which Members and Supporters agreed on the key priorities for 2026. A major milestone was the formal approval of the 2026 tactical priorities, which include a new patient involvement working group, refocusing our working groups on project delivery and creating the first Open Pharma Annual Report. These decisions set a clear direction for our activities in 2026, which will focus on open access, plain language summaries and patient involvement.

Registered Reports topic meeting

• During our October topic meeting, guest speakers Erick Turner (Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University and former US Food and Drug Administration Medical Reviewer) and Chris Chambers (Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Cardiff University and Co-founder of Registered Reports) explained how Registered Reports can eradicate publication bias and improve the transparency and reproducibility of biomedical research. The discussion explored the perceived challenges that prevent pharma from adopting Registered Reports, including the time and effort required to secure additional protocol review. To read more about their perspectives, you can explore the accompanying blog post here.

Open Pharma Day

• Open Pharma Day brought together experts from pharma, publishing, academia and patient organizations to explore how to rebuild trust in biomedical research communication. The meeting highlighted six core ideas: helping people ask better, evidence‑based questions; meeting the public’s need for clear and reliable information; improving how evidence is assessed; strengthening patient engagement; making reliability visible in an artificial intelligence (AI)‑driven world and ensuring AI tools are built on high‑quality, FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data. Read more about Open Pharma Day in this blog post.

Insight of the month

‘Dangerous and alarming’: Google removes some of its AI summaries after users’ health put at risk via The Guardian | 6-minute read

• An investigation by The Guardian found that Google’s AI Overviews displayed misleading medical information, including incorrect liver test ranges and advice that could give patients false reassurance. While Google has removed some summaries, similar queries can still produce incomplete or potentially unsafe results. This underlines the need for trustworthy, well‑sourced, validated and AI-friendly information, particularly when it may influence healthcare decisions. Decentralized Knowledge Graphs (DKGs) offer a powerful approach, combining blockchain, retrieval-augmented generation and FAIR data principles to ensure integrity and transparency of AI-generated research assessments. By adopting DKGs, we can enable personalized patient education, automated literature reviews, clinical decision support and more, all while reducing the risk of misinformation.

Recommended reads

Establishing trust in healthcare information via Open Pharma | 9-minute read

The UK is rewriting the Transparency Playbook – and what it means for anyone planning a trial after 2026 via LinkedIn | 8-minute read

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Health: 5 things to know via MedCity News | 4-minute read

Novartis joins Vivli as a member to share its data via Vivli | 1‑minute read

Upcoming dates and deadlines

• AI discussion forum | From checklist to code: automating transparent, hallucination-free evidence synthesis – 09:00 EST / 14:00 GMT / 15:00 CET on 4 February 2026
• Patient involvement working group | Welcome to the working group – 10:30 EST / 15:30 GMT / 16:30 CET on 5 February 2026
• PLS and discoverability working group | ISMPP Europe debrief – 10:00 EST / 15:00 GMT / 16:00 CET on 9 February 2026
• OA working group | Request OA project updates – 09:00 EST / 14:00 GMT / 15:00 CET on 20 February 2026
• Members’ meeting – 09:00 EST / 14:00 GMT / 15:00 CET on 26 February 2026

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We hope you enjoyed this month’s highlights and found them inspiring. As always, we welcome your feedback and contributions – if you have an idea for a future monthly update, let us know! To keep up to date with what we’re doing between updates, make sure to follow us on Bluesky and LinkedIn.