Read the rest of this series of blogs about designing and planning population based systems of care here. Step 4: Choosing criteria Choosing criteria is a more time consuming process and may need to be addressed separately. For example it is important to reach an agreed definition by what is meant by “diagnose quickly” and […]
Category: Columnists
Paul Glasziou: Should we abandon the term “hypertension?”
Disease labels have an aura of authority and permanence. But definitions can drift considerably over time changing who is and is not classified as “diseased.” For hypertension, Greene [1] has nicely documented the steady lowering of the threshold over the past five decades, but we have kept the same label and same attitudes. It might […]
Tiago Villanueva: What’s new in European primary care research?
The University of Antwerp, Belgium, recently hosted the 75th meeting of the European General Practice Research Network. Paul Van Royen, dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Antwerp spoke about the challenges for primary care research, namely innovation, transferability, interprofessionalism, social impact, and partnership. In terms of innovation, he […]
Muir Gray: Setting objectives for systems of care
Read the rest of this series of blogs about designing and planning population based systems of care here. Step 3: Setting objectives Having defined the scope of the system and agreed the population to be served, the next step is to set objectives. […]
Richard Smith: We need more doctor entrepreneurs
The NHS, UK PLC, and the wider world will all benefit if we have more doctor entrepreneurs willing to take risks and start up companies. Starting up a company can be exhilarating, but it’s also complex and exhausting. Healthbox has been founded to help health start ups, and last week it’s managing director, Nick Rosa, […]
David Kerr: Pooky night
When I was growing up in Scotland, celebrating Halloween was a major event in the calendar and something to look forward to at this grim time of year. Everyone got dressed up (to go “guising”) and participating households carved lanterns out of turnips (a Scottish turnip is an English swede) rather than the now ubiquitous […]
Richard Smith: Meet and learn from Dr Twitter
At a meeting in Copenhagen earlier this week Bertalan Mesko was introduced as “the world leader in social media and medicine.” After listening to him and looking at some of his websites I decided that this was not an exaggeration. If you want to be up to the minute on social media and medicine you […]
Julian Sheather: Time to claim kin with the volcanologists?
No, I am not about to declare myself a closet trekkie. I have in mind the decision by Judge Marco Billi to jail six Italian seismologists for giving ‘false assurances’ before an earthquake hit L’Aquila in 2009, a decision, as the BBC just couldn’t help saying, that sent “shockwaves” through the scientific community. What made […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Training the next generation of NCD researchers in developing countries
Who will be the leaders working on the front lines in the battle against the rising tide of non communicable diseases in developing countries? Who will prepare them to take on this task? More practically, how will we pay for this and how will there be enough strength in numbers to make a difference? If […]
Pritpal S Tamber: The time is right to put patients at the heart of healthcare
The clinical data collected by hospitals in England is almost completely useless. So says Tim Kelsey, the recently appointed National Director for Patients and Information. It’s so bad, he believes, that National Clinical Directors charged with commissioning services simply cannot do their job because there is no useful data to base their work on. […]