Technology magazine Wired held its annual health conference in London on 29 April, with 21 speakers presenting “the future of the healthcare and medical industries.” Thomas Macaulay was there for The BMJ, and presents his pick of the day’s sessions: […]
Category: Editors at large
Anne Gulland: Who wants to live forever?
Would you like to live to be 10,000? Or how about a more reasonable sounding 120? These were questions posed at an event organised by Intelligence Squared under the heading: the future of health, when death becomes optional. João Pedro de Magalhães, a senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool, offered some intriguing insights into […]
Georg Röggla: Choosing wisely in Germany
I attended the annual convention of the German Society of Internal Medicine DGIM (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Innere Medizin) in Mannheim this week. The main focus of this congress is transferring knowledge from bench to bedside and a large proportion of participants are primarily clinicians. I was interested to see that a BMJ topic was one […]
Doctors, The BMJ, and Ireland’s Easter Rising
Earlier this year Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE screened a three part documentary to mark the 100th anniversary of the six day Easter Rising, the rebellion against British rule that led ultimately to the foundation of the Republic and the island’s partition to create Northern Ireland. The programmes, screened by the BBC this week as part […]
The sugar tax: “Was it The BMJ wot won it?”
“Get something out on social?” urged a colleague in response to UK Chancellor George Osborne’s sugar tax announcement in his Budget speech last week. “I think you can claim that as a ‘win’ for The BMJ” added another after we reminded him of the many articles we have published on the sugar tax. We quickly […]
Junior doctor strike: Angels need to eat and pay their bills
The junior doctor strike in England triggered an Oxford Union debate last month about the extent to which patient safety is compromised when public sector workers take industrial action. But will health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s revamp of pay and conditions stop at doctors? Are nurses in his sights? And if so, how likely are they […]
Medicine and literature: The 2016 Wellcome Book Prize
The role of medicine in our lives, and in literature, is the key theme explored by the books shortlisted for this year’s Wellcome Book Prize, according to Joan Bakewell who chaired the awards judging panel. Introducing the shortlist, Bakewell said the role of medicine in our lives was a “dynamic and growing genre of literature […]
David Payne: How disease outbreaks drive digital innovation
To what extent do disasters and disease outbreaks drive developments in digital health? And as the WHO and other national and global health agencies get to grips with the Zika virus outbreak, what lessons can be learned from the 2014 Ebola epidemic? John Edmunds, Dean of the Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health at the […]
Gareth Iacobucci: FOI reprieve is welcome but expect the pushback to continue
This week, privacy campaigners breathed a sigh of relief after a review commissioned by the UK government decided not to change the law to introduce greater restrictions on the release of public data under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. The independent commission was set up to establish whether the Act currently allowed ministers sufficient […]
Tony Delamothe: In search of joinedupedness
The stated aim of the recent King’s Fund conference, “Integrating care throughout the patient’s surgical journey” was to align the objectives of the NHS five year forward view and the Royal College of Anaesthetists’s Perioperative Medicine Programme. For me, the message was that trying to see things from the patient’s point of view gave the […]