The life of a researcher seems to me to be a thankless task. Most research concludes that more research is needed on pretty much any given subject in pretty much the whole world. I have long looked forward to the BMJ paper that concludes: “We can close the book on this. It is now a […]
Category: Editors at large
Deborah Cohen: Despite recent scandals, implantable devices will not have to undergo clinical studies, leaked European draft legislation reveals
Metal on metal hips; breast implants; cardiac devices—the list of European device regulatory failures goes on. And it may be set to continue, if current EU proposals to “reform” device regulation go ahead. To try to alleviate consumer concerns two years ago, the European Commission—responsible for developing the legislation about how medical devices are regulated—decided […]
David Payne: Holy Kaw! The Kawasaki ego has landed
I’m not surprised that Guy Kawasaki’s 10th book is called Enchantment: How to Woo, Influence, and Persuade. It takes some chutzpah to assume near–zero knowledge of social media at a scholarly publishing conference but Kawasaki, a former “software evangelist” (I kid you not!) for Apple, pulls it off with an idiot’s guide to curation, tweeting, […]
David Payne: Playing the sepsis game
There are 1.1m cases of sepsis each year in the US, costing $17bn to treat and accounting for 17% of hospital mortality. Doctors at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California wanted to help their fellow physicians to recognise and treat it, but instead of producing a paper or video, devised a game. […]
Neil Chanchlani: Where will your travel bug take you?
Medical students and doctors often talk about practising in other countries. I constantly hear the same tune echoed in lecture theatres or on the wards, “You can travel anywhere with medicine, that’s what so great about it.” Many take years out and head south east to countries such as Australia to bathe in the sun […]
Domhnall MacAuley on Andy Murray, exercise tsar.
Andy Murray is the new Scottish Government Physical Activity Champion. No, not Andy Murray the tennis player. A real athlete—an elite ultra distance runner, Edinburgh GP, and sports medicine expert. He leads by example. Ultra marathons in the Gobi desert, the Arctic, the Indonesian jungle, never mind little diversions like the West Highland Way, a […]
Deborah Cohen: Access to NICE approved drugs
In the midst of his heavy schedule, defending his controversial NHS reforms, Andrew Lansley, health secretary for England, has found the time to form a new expert panel which will contribute to a government report on the NHS Constitution. […]
Edward Davies: This bill is happening. Doctors will need to make it work.
Watching Andrew Lansley at the Nuffield Trust Summit last week was to watch a man surprisingly at ease. The Health Secretary is at the centre of a huge media storm, surrounding an enormously mangled bill, decried by all and sundry in the medical profession and beyond. But he started his talk with a joke, he […]
Trish Groves: TED 2012 Full spectrum
Chris Anderson, TED’s curator, told us on day 1 that this would be the most ambitious TED conference yet and, for its organisers, the most terrifying because speakers had been invited to find new, powerful ways of extracting the most out of their talks. Each had been urged, said Anderson, to “find the prism that […]
Trish Groves: TED 2012 Only connect
“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.” (EM Forster Howards End) Here at TEDActive—the younger, funkier sister of California’s TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) annual conference—Forster’s 1921 theme […]