According to Winston Churchill, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” For good or ill we elect our representatives, they have the democratic mandate to make decisions, and if we don’t like them we vote for someone else next time. Part of good public health is informing and influencing the […]
The number of doctors leaving Greece to work abroad is causing a shortage of medical staff in Greece. As a medical student, I have experienced both the British and Greek medical educational systems. I completed my undergraduate medical degree in Athens and I am now finishing my doctoral studies at the Department of psychiatry, University […]
Avoiding conflicts of interest in a guideline committee is now recognised internationally as being one of the most important aspects of creating robust guidance. At NICE, we’ve reflected this in our evolving policy for managing potential conflicts, and have become more and more rigorous in our process for appointing people to committees. This is ever […]
Soft-tissue fillers have become a cornerstone of modern nonsurgical aesthetic medicine, but they have come on a long way since the use of paraffin as a filler in nineteenth century aesthetic medicine. A dry distillation by-product of beech-wood tar paraffin was discovered in 1830 by German chemist Baron Karl Ludwig von Reichenbach, who noted its […]
We will need new principles and regulations to govern medical artificial intelligence […]
Within years, almost every home in Britain, and many other countries around the world, could be equipped with a device capable of delivering an array of remote health and care services—a smart meter. A small but growing body of research (captured in a recent review by colleagues and myself) highlights the range of ways in […]
Security issues that are specific to genome data need to be considered […]
Reuben Granich, Sindhu Ravishankar, and José M. Zuniga Good News from London It is welcome news that HIV diagnoses in England fell by 17% between 2014 and 2015 with a decline that was largely driven by a 32% drop in diagnoses among gay men attending five of London’s largest sexual health clinics [1]. Delay in […]
Newborn screening programmes for a set of disease biomarkers are mandatory in many countries of the world in order to detect inborn errors early on and to avoid disabilities in or the premature death of otherwise healthy babies. The conditions selected for newborn screening depend on defined criteria that include incidence, morbidity and mortality, the […]
I write in patients’ notes in blue ink. Not only does this enable me to find my previous inserts rapidly among the ever-increasing reams of paperwork, but perhaps more importantly, I believe it is neater for others to decipher my writing, and thus safer for patient care. Unfortunately, however, I am all too often accosted […]