Dr Al-Hilali is the author of Birth MCV and MCH are quite reliable parameters for the prediction of alpha thalassemia minor which was recently published in Clinical Medicine: Blood Disorders.

The Editor in Chief of Clinical Medicine: Blood Disorders recently issued a call for papers.

Please describe your experience with Libertas Academica

Libertas Academica not only carries the good features of open medical publishing but has features of its own. The way one's manuscript flows through the strata of peer reviewing and editing is so nice and precise that you know for sure next step is coming and in an astonishingly short time. This way authors know for sure that, if their paper is going to be accepted then it will be on screens of the readers very early.

What is the primary focus of your research?

I am a hematopathologist who has worked in routine hematopathology and blood transfusion throughout my career. This has been dictated by the nature of hospitals where I worked. Patients' service has the priority. However, I like research and have found time to do some with the result of 36 publications so far. Hemoglobinopathies, blood transfusion and coagulation disorders have been my preferred fields. I do have some occasional publications in other fields of hematopathology and clinical hematology

What are the most exciting developments arising from current research in your area?

I have always thought that alpha thalassemia is not being precisely diagnosed after early life by our routine methods. At birth we know that there is a definitive stigma of presence of Hb Barts. Since it is not practical to do Hb electrophoresis or HPLC on all neonates I was trying to identify simple parameters that make alpha thalassemia highly probable so we can perform HPLC only in such cases. Together with my teams in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia we confirmed such parameters . I presented the paper in the Congress of the ISH in 2005 then published the work in Clinical Medicine-Hematology Disoders recently. Meanwhile, I moved to Dubai and had the help of a new team to check the work on a new and mixed population. We succeeded in this and paper was presented in the ISH in Bangkok last year. I am glad to say that the use of the method is spreading and there has been a recent publication from Thailand.

Who are your main collaborators? Please describe your work with them

Where I usually work in the Gulf I am the only consultant in the specialty and my teams are mostly registrar doctors and technologists.

How did you come to be working in your research area?

It is the predominance of such diseases in the area where I work that led me to focus on them. I discovered with my team a novel Factor X in coagulation and helped diagnose diseases like thalassemias, being very common and complex in the area. Improvement of blood transfusion services is one of my interests. Last year I received the first Annual Arab Health Award for my work in the tranfusion field.

What do you think about the development of open access publishing? What motivated you to use it?

Throughout my publication history I have suffered from delays, discrepancies and even loss of material. I wanted to try this system and found it most convenient.

What articles and/or books have you published recently?

In addition to the paper published in Clinical Medicine: Blood Disorders, hematologis disorders on diagnosis of alpha thalassemia at birth, the confirmation work from Dubai has been accepted in hematology reviews and will appear soon. I have 3 books in Arabic, one on anaemia, one on leukaemia and one on coagulopathies and thrombophilias.