NEJM 22 October 2015 Vol 373 Neatest knee trial 1597 “Whatever next. A patient centred, surgical RCT on a common operation with a thoughtful, patient centred editorial in the NEJM,” wrote a friend on the day this paper appeared. Like minded messages and tweets poured in from both sides of the Atlantic. This randomised trial […]
The Islampur sub-division of the Uttar Dinajpur district of West Bengal (a state in India) is the most underperforming area of the state in terms of health and other human development indicators. This sub-division has five blocks, and among these five blocks, Goalpokher-I is the least developed. Goalpokher-I lies between Bangladesh to the east and […]
School children constitute over 25% of India’s population of 1.21 billion people. School health in India is limited to sporadic screening in public schools. Private schools, where 30 million urban children (66%) go, are ignored. There are 197,541 schools in urban India, mostly catering to low and middle income groups. School aged children in urban […]
The Old English dictionary called the Epinal glossary, glossed the Latin word “bile”, a form of bilis, as “átr”, later spelt atter, meaning gall or bitterness. However, “atter” and “bile” or “gall” are not etymologically connected. The Indo-European root ATR meant fire, and by association blackening caused by fire; bile and gall came from GHEL, […]
The liveliest e-mail streams I have ever encountered are the ones which are currently coming out of the Overdiagnosis Group, set up by Margaret McCartney last year. The group is now a standing body within the Royal College of General Practitioners and most of its members are working GPs. But there are participants from all […]
Poor provision “We have 77 psychiatrists, most of them in Nairobi. Quite a big chunk of them are doing private practice and only for those people who can afford their services. In fact, in Kenya, we don’t have a psychiatrist working at the level of the community full time. We don’t have that kind of […]
Journals have been the main way to publish scientific research for 400 years, and remarkably they still are despite 20 years of the World Wide Web. But it’s becoming increasingly clear both that the journal model is beginning to creak and that better models are appearing. I’m working with F1000, and we propose moving from […]
This blog is part of a series of blogs linked with BMJ Clinical Evidence, a database of systematic overviews of the best available evidence on the effectiveness of commonly used interventions. Debating the value of integrative health and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) can be a frustrating endeavour. Proponents are often passionate. For many, it […]
New technology companies need the oxygen of someone else’s money to survive and grow, that’s how capitalism works. Here in California, multi-million dollar investments and eye-watering billion dollar company valuations are everyday news. The ultimate goal of new technology companies is to gain “unicorn” status as rapidly as possible i.e. be valued at more than […]
In my relatively short career as a GP there has been a surge of interest in talking therapies for mental health problems. It seems that the “one-size-fits-all” population-based research being shoe-horned and imposed onto every patient in the consultation approach is what is needed and required by our paymasters. The current trend of therapy that […]