I just registered for an ORCID ID—I’m 0000-0002-4202-7813 in case you were wondering, but I still answer to Liz. I know I’ve written about ORCID before, but that was before it was launched, and I think it’s such a neat idea I’ve decided to blog about it again now it is up and running and […]
Category: Columnists
Richard Smith: Multiplicity: the power of the many, or what we can learn from Barcelona FC
Last month some 500 of us gathered in Bologna to remember Alessandro Liberati, founder of the Italian Cochrane Centre, a great thinker about health, and a personal friend to most of the 500. As I’ve described in a previous blog, the day was built around Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, which discussed […]
Richard Smith: Six memos on the future of healthcare
How many of us can expect a year after we die to have some 500 people attend a meeting to celebrate our life, discuss our work, and think about the future agenda that flows from our work? “Almost none of us” is the answer, but it happened for Alessandro Liberati in Bologna in December. Most […]
James Raftery: QALYs and value based pricing
This blog reports on a workshop held by the Department of Health on 28 November 2012 under Chatham House rules, that is the discussion can be reported but not attributed. This workshop aimed to provide a framework for “a part of the government exploring use of QALY weights” in value based pricing (VBP), specifically: Burden […]
Tiago Villanueva: How does the financial crisis affect demand for health services?
The unemployment rate in Portugal is at an all time high of 16,3%, and 2013 is looking even bleaker, due to announced tax hikes that will see people’s net income squeezed even further. As a locum doctor, my hourly rates have dropped by about 20% compared to one year ago, and sadly, I am expecting […]
Paul Glasziou: Santa, could you take some things away instead?
Dear Santa, This year, instead of presents I wondered if instead you might take some things away? Maybe you could start with unnecessary tests, unhelpful diagnoses, and over treatment? These can be harmful to the individuals who receive them, but also results in patients with real medical needs having delayed or no services. If we […]
Richard Smith: Selling your personal data
“The government wants to sell our personal data to the highest bidder, and it stinks,” said somebody, making her position very clear, at a meeting at the House of Commons organised by the Industry and Parliament Trust on making anonymised NHS data widely available. (I can’t tell you who made the statement as the meeting […]
Kieran Walsh: “Fortunately…education produces no effect whatsoever”
One of the latest thoughts to emanate from authorities in medical education is that investments in education will produce a tangible return on investment. The theory goes a bit like this: you invest in educational provision, healthcare professionals learn and put their learning into action, and this results in a return on investment. This return […]
Richard Smith: The case for slow medicine
The characteristics of health systems are complexity, uncertainty, opacity, poor measurement, variability in decision making, asymmetry of information, conflict of interest, and corruption. They are thus largely a black box and uncontrollable, said Gianfranco Domenighetti of the Università della Svizzera Italiana at a meeting in Bologna on La Sanità tra Ragione e passione (Health through […]
Martin McKee: How should the United States respond to gun crime?
A few days ago a disturbed young man in Newtown, Connecticut, shot his mother before going to the primary school where she worked to murder 20 children, aged between six and seven years old, and six staff. The immediate response was disbelief and shock at yet another mass shooting in America. But this was followed, […]