Bottlenecks in Acute Stroke Care and Research

We are pleased to introduce a new section in Stroke . As implied by the name, it is meant to be a forum for submissions dealing mainly with solutions for issues in stroke care and research that impact progress. Submissions may address the full range of problems arising in stroke research and care and should focus on the solutions that are proposed by the authors.This section entails a departure from the traditional, hypothesis-driven, scientific communication. Why then might we need such a section? The traditional scientific article comprises a hypothesis, an experimental design to test the hypothesis, and results that comprise a clinical or laboratory data set. Analysis of the results then allows a discussion and conclusions to be made, thus leading to further hypotheses or changes to clinical practice that enable scientific progress. The resulting scientific article has a traditional format and undergoes a peer-review process to evaluate its scientific merit, importance, credibility, and the appropriateness of its conclusions.However, progress has several components; an initial one is the innovation that leads to initial hypotheses or to changes in practice that must subsequently be tested. The Webster English Dictionary defines innovation as “the act or process of introducing new ideas, devices, or methods.” Clinicians and researchers do this all the time. Innovation takes place any time when we try to improve on what we already do, frequently in response to a problem encountered in day-to-day work. As the definition suggests, innovation can happen at …