The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has recently published to a targeted audience final consultation draft papers on its new “proactive” transparency policy on clinical trial results. As reported, information published under the draft policy would be on a screen-read only basis, would not include commercially confidential information (CCI) as defined by the EMA, would be subject […]
Category: Columnists
Jim Murray: Who cares about the European Parliament?
Many people across Europe regard the European Parliament as irrelevant, or worse. Personally I find this sad but they are entitled to their view. I wrote a blog here a few months ago to illustrate the important work done by many MEPs, taking the example of clinical trials. You can find it here. I thought […]
Tiago Villanueva: Should we “own” our health?
I don’t often have the chance to meet people like Ron Dembo, who have a vision and ideas that could change the world, or at least the world of healthcare. Dembo is the CEO and Founder of Zerofootprint, a software and services company that makes environmental impact measurable, visible, and manageable to businesses, governments, institutions, […]
Mary E Black: Look at me
I was a bit of a star in my early 30s at Harvard’s School of Public Health. On a fully funded and prestigious Harkness Fellowship (so a treasured person in the Harvard lexicon), I was bubbly, thin, well dressed, elected to student government, volunteering for just about everything, and winner of the competition to represent […]
Neal Maskrey: Do doctors need to understand more about decision making?
A few months before the 2004 UEFA European Football Championship, we moved to the sports mad north west of England, where you could taste the anticipation. St George’s flags hung from houses, work rotas were switched to catch the live matches on TV, and we put on a street barbeque for England’s first match. Bunting […]
Richard Smith: The polypill reaches the plateau of productivity
“I’m outraged,” said Robert Beaglehole, former director at WHO responsible for non communicable disease, at the end of the second polypill summit in Melbourne recently. He’s outraged because the world is failing to respond adequately to the “global public health crisis” of non communicable disease (NCD) that is destroying lives in low and middle income […]
Tiago Villanueva: Have you started planning your death?
I have to admit I always try to steer away from any uncomfortable thoughts about death concerning myself or my loved ones, and I have realized that I have never given a thought, let alone done any of the five things recommended by the coalition Dying Matters to both live and die well. They recommend […]
Billy Boland on using social media effectively in healthcare
Social media is now seen as a tool with potential in healthcare leadership, and some of the online learning at the NHS Leadership Academy is devoted to this. Like most people I’ve messed around with social media over the years. But whilst I usually style myself as ahead of the times, it took me a […]
Mary E Black: Essential reading for new NHS Executives
I have just joined the NHS Executive fast track programme. There will be 51 of us in total—36 clinicians from within the NHS and 15 application from outside the NHS. We will need to get up to speed fast on understanding the NHS in England. Here is my starter list of ten key sources of information […]
David Lock: Ghana—not a smoker in sight
I have just returned from two weeks in Ghana, a fascinating and challenging country on so many fronts, but significant because I hardly saw a single Ghanaian smoking throughout my time in the country. We went to Ghana because my brother-in-law (who lived out there until earlier this year) was getting married to a lovely […]