Has the health tech industry and those who fund it lost the plot? Apparently, the next must have technology is the connected toothbrush. A “data driven oral health startup” company in the United States has just received a multi-million dollar investment to further develop a smartphone connected toothbrush. With this toothbrush, an accelerometer measures how […]
The BMJ Today: When the worst choice is no choice at all
You would think that any woman raped as an act of war would be given access to a safe abortion by an international organisation providing aid. Sally Howard’s Feature on thebmj.com reveals that, astonishingly, this is often not the case. I would highly recommend reading this article. It explains that the 1973 Helms Amendment to the […]
Jamila Sherif et al: The current state of healthcare in Gaza
State of healthcare in June 2014 Three weeks before the start of the current Israel–Gaza conflict, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza declared an emergency, saying that they were unable to maintain health services owing to a lack of sufficient electricity and necessary supplies. Elective operations had to be cancelled. Thirty per cent of […]
The BMJ Today: Doctors in Scotland plan to vote against independence
The results of a survey published today by The BMJ on how doctors in Scotland plan to vote in the referendum next month found that 60% plan to vote “no” to independence, while just a third (33%) said they intend to vote “yes.” Doctors are more staunchly opposed to independence than the overall population of […]
Mary McCarthy: UK GPs versus EU GPs
I sometimes wonder if the UK government realises how much general practices in this country accomplish in comparison to their counterparts in Europe and the United States. There was a time, 20 or 30 years ago, when there was not much to choose between GPs in the UK and family doctors in other countries, apart from […]
The BMJ Today: Part time medical students and unhelpful drug information
Why can’t UK medical students study part time? Wags may argue that there have always been some medical students whose studies have played second fiddle to other interests. Others may dredge up the old stereotype of the dossing student who dodges hard graft at any opportunity. But the reality is that offering part time study […]
Liz Wager: Research integrity—how can institutions balance discipline and support?
The suicide of Yoshiki Sasai is both tragic and shocking. Sasai was deputy director of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, and a co-author of reports in Nature on the phenomenon of “stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency” (or STAP), which were retracted. Although Sasai was not accused of misconduct himself, he was criticised in an institutional […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—11 August 2014
NEJM 7 August 2014 Vol 371 497 A new gene for breast cancer susceptibility? The PALB2 gene locus has been known about for several years, but this study puts it firmly on the map by intensively investigating 362 members of 154 affected families. The risk for female PALB2 mutation carriers, as compared with the general […]
The BMJ Today: How UK doctors should “be prepared” for Ebola
“The ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the largest and most complicated that the world has even seen.” It is from this starting point that a group of experts begin their summation of how healthcare professionals in the UK can prepare themselves for what the World Health Organization has declared a “public health emergency […]
The BMJ Today: Combating Ebola, and more on statins
This morning the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa an international health emergency and stated that a concerted international response is required to stop and reverse the spread of the disease. The Ebola epidemic presents a quandary for the medical community. In the absence of evidence based treatments, should […]