Review of Atul Gawande: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. Profile Books Margaret McCartney: Living with Dying. Pinter and Martin Surgeon, professor, and best selling writer Atul Gawande confesses halfway through his new book, Being Mortal, “I felt foolish to still be learning how to talk to people at this stage in […]
Pritpal S Tamber: Moustaches, fund raising, and independence from the current healthcare system
I am growing a moustache. This is not the kind of thing you usually need to broadcast, but I am growing it as part of Movember because I believe these kinds of mission specific campaigns are crucial to finding new ways to fund health related services. […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—24 November 2014
NEJM 20 November 2014 Vol 371 1963 The melanoma trials last week got me thinking about how the current model of cancer drug research lets down trial participants and dying patients. Between 2002 and 2014, there have been 71 drug approvals by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of metastatic and/or advanced and/or […]
The BMJ Today: Why are we bringing back smoking?
As an ex-smoker who gave up the habit with huge difficulty 30 years ago, I have been pleased at the way smoking has become increasingly invisible in my life. First it disappeared from advertisements on my television screen, then from colleagues in my office, and then from my pub. But now it is reappearing. Last week […]
David Zigmond: Payments for diagnosing dementia—what are the hidden costs?
Payment by results in matters of complex welfare can easily subtract from, rather than add to, our greater good. The recent and mooted NHS initiative for payment by results—to pay GPs £55 for each new dementia diagnosis—matches any folly in our contemporary gallery of well intentioned welfare misconceptions. This fresh folly draws from these simplistic […]
Paul Laboi: Making dialysis care more person centred
It’s increasingly recognised that empowering people to take a greater role in managing their healthcare is beneficial for both patients and healthcare professionals, especially for those living with long term conditions. Evidence shows that many people enjoy taking an active role in their treatment, and that doing so can lead to better outcomes and improved […]
Will Stahl-Timmins: Data visualisation is beautiful
David McCandless’s talk at the Royal Statistical Society David McCandless is perhaps the best known information graphic designer of our time. He exploded onto the design stage a few years ago with the coffee table book Information is Beautiful, based on the corresponding blog website of the same name. The website now also hosts the […]
The BMJ Today: Sex, babies, and future plans
I don’t get out much, but with blogs like the one by Nigel Hawkes to read, I don’t feel I need to. It gave me a great picture of the latest exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London, which is about sexuality and the scientists who studied it . He writes, “ . . . […]
Chris Simms: What can Senegal teach the West about dealing with Ebola?
Ten years ago, Peter Piot (the discoverer of Ebola) wrote the foreword to a collaborative effort on HIV strategies by nearly 200 scientists. He warned that an effective country response to the epidemic requires adherence to the so called “Three Ones” principle: a single national strategy, coordinated by one agency, and supported by one monitoring and […]
Khaled E Emam: Pseudonymous data is not anonymous data
Recently, efforts have been made to make health data more generally available for secondary purposes, including research. These include the recent policy announcements from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on making clinical trials data available, industry efforts to do the same, as well as care.data in the UK. All of these are premised on being able […]