Working in supermarkets over the summer holidays can be an education for many an aspiring medical student as, to quote Henry James (and the News of the World newspaper), “all human life is there.” In the supermarket aisles the best and worst aspects of humanity are often laid bare while the checkout assistant struggles to […]
Kirsten Patrick on the European Network of Centres for Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacovigilance (ENCePP)
On 29 June 2011 the European Medicines Agency (EMA) collected a group of journal editors to introduce to us to, and get our views on, their fairly recently launched European Network of Centres for Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacovigilance (ENCePP). ENCePP, and its e-register of studies, has been developed in collaboration with leading European researchers in the […]
Tiago Villanueva: Barbara Starfield’s legacy
Primary healthcare gurus can’t compete with the ranks of top film or sports stars in terms of global notoriety, but Barbara Starfield, who died earlier this month in California aged 78, was one of the most, if not the most, glistening star of the world of academic primary healthcare. She came as close to worldwide celebrity status as a […]
Yasir Hameed: Power, fuel, food, and water shortages in Yemen
Nearly two weeks have passed since my last update here, and the situation in Yemen is still deteriorating rapidly. One of the most shocking reports I have come across said that power cuts and fuel shortages mean that vulnerable patients are dying in hospitals in many parts of Yemen. Despite the seriousness of the situation there, I had great […]
James Raftery: Avastin, Lucentis, and NICE
A useful update was provided at a meeting this week sponsored by the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) and Patients Involved in NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence). As the proceedings are to be written up and published, I focus here on the key points that emerged for me. […]
David Pencheon: Future-proof hospitals? Go straight for future-proof systems…
Chris Ham’s article in last week’s Observer newspaper (“Politicians have ducked hard decisions on the NHS for far too long” Sunday 19 June 2011), and a news story in this week’s BMJ (BMJ 2011;342:d3921), claim that up to 20 hospitals, around 10% of the total in England, may not be financially sustainable. This is highly probable […]
Ian Williams: Comics and medicine
I have just returned from five days in Chicago, from a conference organised by myself and four American colleagues. Entitled Comics and Medicine: The Sequential Art of Illness, the event took place at the Freiburg School of Medicine from 9 to 12 June 2011 and kicked off with an exhibition of comics art, the idea […]
Richard Smith: How important are the “early origins of health?”
How important is what happens to you in fetal and neonatal life in determining whether you develop heart disease later in life? I found myself thinking about that question a great deal back in the early 90s when the BMJ published many studies by David Barker, who in 1986 published the “Barker hypothesis” that fetal […]
Muir Gray:”The most effective screening programme ever”
“The most effective screening programme ever,” this was Richard Doll’s gentle jest when I was director of national screening programmes. Aware of my efforts to ensure that screening did much more good than harm, using every improvement technique I could learn from IHI, Toyota, and wherever, he would point out that the auscultation of the […]
Martin McShane: A tale of two citizens?
Four years ago I participated in scenario planning. The document that emerged is as relevant today as it was then – perhaps because it was looking “Over the Horizon,” taking a ten year view and considering plausible alternative futures for health care. We envisaged four scenarios: Fools Gold, Swimming Upstream, Red Arrows, and A Tale […]