Thousands of well intentioned donations are made to developing countries every year but many of these do not achieve what was hoped; they don’t make it to the intended recipient, or they’re unfit for purpose when they do. I hope I can persuade you that this is not the case for Lifebox oximeters. I was […]
Ian Woolley: Hepatitis E in South Sudan
Pestilence, along with war, famine, and death, is sometimes portrayed as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse of the Bible’s Book of Revelations, which describes, amongst other things, the coming of the end of times. It is a compelling image and indicative of the fear that plagues have engendered throughout history. Plagues are […]
Kirsten Patrick: This old dog learns new tricks: genomics
Although the term “genomics” was coined in 1986 by geneticist Tom Roderick, I didn’t learn about genomics at medical school in the early 1990s. We studied “genetics” and a bit of molecular biology, but the genetic medicine we were taught was, as far as I remember, mostly about patterns of heredity and the few diseases […]
David Kerr: Crowd sourcing clinical research
Taxpayers in the UK fund the NHS but are rarely asked directly about how the money should be spent. A few years ago local patients with diabetes were asked what our diabetes centre should do if for some reason they were bequeathed a pot of money. Options included screening for diabetes, treating obesity, early detection […]
Desmond O’Neill: Think global, act local
Visiting Kennebunkport, Maine, in winter is a surreal experience, almost akin to playing an extra in the Truman Show. Neat clapper board houses and snow encrusted churches cluster around a serpiginous and sylvan sea inlet. In the grocery cum café store locals cluster over coffee and cinnamon buns amid the general supplies in an ambience […]
Muir Gray: Developing a system budget
Read the rest of this series of blogs about designing and planning population based systems of care here. Step 8: Developing a system budget One of the aims of developing systems is for clinicians and patient representatives to be involved in the stewardship of resources. They can fight for more resources, but they also need […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Matching doctors’ roles to skills and personality
“The thing that makes someone get up at 5am and run—we want it.” Besides the text was a picture of a running shoe. It was a recruitment advertisement for managers of Aldi, the low price supermarket store. The message was clear—they knew the type of person they wanted, and the reader knew immediately if it […]
Liz Wager: Follow the rules—as soon as we’ve written them
One of my most vivid schoolday memories is of being told off for doing something I didn’t know was forbidden. My crime was “running in the school corridors” which seemed perfectly reasonable behaviour to me (as I was late for a lesson), but which apparently was against the school rules. I can still remember my […]
Paul Glasziou: Most innovations are not advances: innovation + evaluation = progress
Innovation is currently fashionable. But new is not necessarily better [1]. Progress rests in sifting out the effective innovations. Edison clearly understood this process: when he developed the light bulb, he tried and discarded thousands of possible filaments. Without testing and recording each option, he may have gone on a random walk and left us […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—14 January 2013
JAMA 9 Jan 2013 Vol 309 155 We know in our bones that vitamin D is important, and we even have a rough idea of the blood levels that are needed to keep our bones healthy. Pretty well everything else about vitamin D is still subject to speculation and investigation, and so many claims have […]