I am lucky because I work with a Director of Finance who likes to make things clear and easy to understand. Last week he went through what is happening to the money for 2011/12. He wanted to help my team, well all of us really, understand where the money has gone. […]
Category: Columnists
Richard Smith: What is “implementation research” and whatever happened to GRIP?
I’m trying to organise a workshop on “implementation research,” and I find that the concept is as hard to pin down as poetry. Might you be able to help me? The overall idea behind implementation research is not hard to identify. It’s about trying to make sure that the results of research are applied in […]
Julian Sheather: Oh for a beaker of mirth
Being a self-sacrificing soul I recently enrolled myself in a critical piece of public health research: I gave up alcohol for January. If appetite is the new front-line in health, if our desires are becoming the death of us, then self-restraint must be the new penicillin, and, to squeeze the analogy a little, the Petri-dish […]
Richard Smith: Twitter to replace peer review?
An interesting article in Nature gives what may be a glimpse of the future of scientific discourse by telling stories of how social media have done a much better and faster job than traditional prepublication review. Science recently published a paper in which researchers claimed to be able to predict human longevity with 77% accuracy. The […]
Richard Smith: Statin arguments
A Spanish friend who is a pharmacist and basic scientist and with whom I have a spirited argument over the polypill has emailed me to gloat over the press reports derived from a Cochrane review that statins provide no benefit for healthy people. She believes that healthy living will suffice for fending off heart attacks […]
Martin McShane: Enthusiasm, cynicism, pragmatism and Pathfinders.
In Lincolnshire, we had 3 Pathfinder consortia announced in the second wave. This is good news. At least, we think it is. We are, however, not sure what being a “Pathfinder” means. It would appear to mean that GPs are enthusiastic about the reforms and taking up the challenge. Is that true? […]
Richard Smith: “Wellness,” an emerging market
Wellness, whatever it might be, is an emerging market, and there is serious money to be made. This was the main message from last night’s meeting of the Cambridge Health Network, a thriving network where men in expensive suits and smartly dressed women, most of whom are consultants and CEOs of companies, mix with public […]
Liz Wager: Are we making too much fuss about patient confidentiality?
In my last blog, I addressed calls for raw research data to be made available. Like most other discussions about publishing data I started from the assumption that individual information must be kept confidential at all costs. That’s a helpful stance when considering the classic doctor-patient relationship but I wonder if it is always necessary […]
Douglas Noble on the public health white paper
Last week the British Medical Association hosted a listening event for over 200 public health professionals, including representatives from various public health bodies (Faculty of Public Health, Royal Society for Public Health, UK Public Health Association, Chartered Institute for Environmental Health, Association of Directors of Public Health and Royal College of Nursing). […]
Julian Sheather: This is the way the world ends – not with a bang but a leak
I was at the Frontline Club recently, watching how the world changes. A grandiose claim perhaps, the latter, but the occasion was a debate on the journalistic impact of the Wikileaks phenomenon. Vaughan Smith, the club’s owner, is currently giving handsome houseroom to Julian Assange, Wikileaks’ founder. In journalistic terms a slightly starry line-up: Ian […]