In December 2008 the Department of Health in England published the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme. It describes how the scheme will operate for at least five years from 2009. The previous scheme was to run to 2010 but the UK government withdrew it in February 2008 following a critical report from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). […]
Category: Columnists
Richard Smith on why the private sector is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals
On Monday I was at a meeting with Bill Clinton and Ban Ki-moon, illustrating my global significance. […]
James Raftery: End of life drugs – what premium? Pt 2
Having recommended NHS use of sunitinib for renal cancer, the appraisal committee of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) issued separate draft guidance for consultation, recommending against the use of bevacizumab, sorafenib, and temsirolimus, which – along with sunitinib – had been rejected for renal cancer in 2008. […]
James Raftery: End of life drugs—what premium? Pt 1
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the UK drugs watchdog, is currently appraising the use of four drugs—bevacizumab, sorafenib, sunitinib, and temsirolimus—for the treatment of advanced or metastatic renal cell cancer. NICE has decided to split this appraisal in two, in order to get guidance out to the NHS as quickly as […]
Demand online access to your medical records, says Richard Smith
I’ve just emailed my GP asking her to give me online access to my medical records. It was quite a palaver as I couldn’t find her email address, or the email address of the practice after searching on Google, and the practice doesn’t seem to have a website. Eventually I had to ring. […]
Richard Smith on barriers to writing and getting published for authors from low income countries
While teaching two courses on “getting published” in Dhaka I had a marvellous opportunity to gather insights into why researchers from a low income country have problems writing and getting published. Most of the researchers were juniors from ICDDR, B (formerly the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh), a well established and highly successful […]
Liz Wager on the definite article
I’ve been editing papers written by speakers of languages, such as Russian and Chinese, that don’t use definite and indefinite articles (“the” or “an”) in the same way as English and mulling over the somewhat mysterious use of articles in medical terms. Some colloquial expressions award illnesses a definite article, so you might hear “He’s […]
Julian Sheather: “Surgeon’s Hall” – On art, medicine and gender
It is fairly widely accepted that medicine is both a science and an art, that it lays claim to a rigorous evidence-based method, while recognising the impact of irreducibly human capacities on healing, capacities like emotion and belief that do not fit easily into a world of verifiability and fact. As a science it aspires […]
Siddharta Yadav on changing perceptions of HIV/AIDS
There is a famous proverb in Nepali which says we learn something either by reading about it or by facing it. I prefer the latter because of the everlasting impression that “facing something” leaves, in contrast to the hazy-sketchy memories of reading. I have been reading about HIV and AIDS since my first year in […]
Liz Wager’s 15th century wisdom on PowerPoint
I use PowerPoint when I’m giving a presentation, and still believe that it’s a helpful tool if used carefully. I agree with other critics such as Trisha Greenhalgh, that slides packed with verbiage are ghastly and sleep-inducing but strong images can help make your message stick. […]