“If you miss the poor, you’ve missed the point,” said Margaret Mungherera in her recent inaugural speech as incoming president of the World Medical Association. She urged doctors around the world to advocate on behalf of the poor. If any delegates from the Hong Kong Medical Association, a WMA member, were present I do hope […]
Category: Guest writers
Ellen Collins on funder priorities for open access
In the last two years, UK policy has taken a clear turn towards open access. With the aim of making published, peer-reviewed research outputs available to anybody who wants to read them, the open access movement has been around for a while. But 2012’s Finch Review, commissioned by David Willetts and accepted by him on […]
Khaled E Emam: Anonymisation and creepy analytics
When health data is shared for secondary purposes, such as for research, there is always the concern about patient privacy. Data custodians want to at least meet the requirements in their relevant laws and regulations. One option for sharing data is to anonymize it beforehand. But anonymization does not protect against stigmatizing analytics, which are […]
Susan Cookson et al: Success with disease surveillance in Somalia
Photo: Children receiving the polio vaccine in Somalia. Despite violence and abuse in Somalia, we wish to report some successes with disease surveillance. We have read with total understanding, but deep sadness the pull out of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) from Somalia. Since the 2011 famine declaration, there […]
Billy Boland on joining the NHS leadership academy
Back in June, I was putting the finishing touches to my application for the NHS Leadership Academy. A new and ambitious venture, it aims to bring leadership and management development to all corners of the NHS on an “industrial scale.” [1] According to its website, around £46 million will be invested into the academy by […]
James Partridge: Reflections on Niki Lauda: A face from the flames
1 August 1976. A date to remember. Niki Lauda crashes, and the world stops. It stopped me in my tracks and forced me to think back. I had handed in my MSc thesis the day before and was set on a month’s holiday before starting a first—unexpected—job. Instead, it was four tough weeks reliving my […]
Mark Taubert: Palliative care—a “depressing” specialty?
As part of the Dying Matters Awareness Week in the UK, we were all encouraged to talk openly about dying in an attempt to be more ready for it. [1] This is something that those working in specialties like palliative care encourage and embrace. But are we truthfully that willing to talk more about our […]
Martin Brunet: 10 minutes for the patient
Mr Jones comes to see me. He is only 62, but has high blood pressure, had a stroke two years ago and still has a noticeable limp as he walks down the corridor to my room. Like most patients, Mr Jones knows that he has 10 minutes for the appointment and has spent the time […]
Jennifer Hislop: Florence Nightingale and Mae West – the unsung pioneers of health policy?
The second part of the session “Investing in health. From health to wealth” at the European Health Forum Gastein was devoted to “Resolving the efficiency and quality dilemma.” Olivia Wigzell, Deputy Director General of Health and Social Affairs in Sweden, spoke eloquently on the topic of health systems performance assessment (HSPA), citing Florence Nightingale as […]
Georgios Lyratzopoulos reports from the diagnostic error in medicine conference
Amidst justified concerns about the potential for overdiagnosis it is easy to forget the great challenges associated with establishing a timely and accurate diagnosis in the first place. Many thousands of patients each year are believed to die or suffer serious harm because of missed diagnoses. In the US, in the last 25 years diagnostic […]