First of all, I want to express my deep sympathy for those who lost their loved ones, their houses, their work, their home towns, and their hope by this terrible disaster. Who, in later times, will be able to understand that we had to fall again into the darkness after we had once known the […]
Martin McShane: Development through delivery and delivery through development.
Almost all our emergent consortia have completed their elections. Chairs are being identified and the process of change and transition is accelerating. Someone asked me last week whether the process we were embarking on was irreversible. Psychologically, I think it would be very hard to reverse it but, more importantly, across the country the clustering […]
David Kerr: Would you rather work for Google or the NHS?
Would you rather work for Google or the NHS? Started in 1996 in a Stanford University student room by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the plan was originally to call the newly created search engine, BackRub. Since then Google has become one of the top 10 companies in the world (number 4 at the moment) […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 21 March 2011
JAMA 16 Mar 2011 Vol 305 1119 “Chronic kidney disease is one of the most rapidly increasing chronic diseases in the United States. More than 20 million US adults have an estimated glomerular filtration rate of less than 60 mL/min/1.73m2, which represents loss of more than half of normal kidney function.” So begins the editorial […]
Richard Smith: Trying to save the forests of Western Kenya
Until very recently the Western Highlands of Kenya (once known as the White Highlands) were thick with forest, but many of those forests have been cut down. A friend in her mid 20s pointed out to me fields on the edge of Eldoret, the main city in the region, that were forest when she was […]
Research highlights – 18 March 2011
“Research highlights” is a weekly round-up of research papers appearing in the print BMJ. We start off with this week’s research questions, before providing more detail on some individual research papers and accompanying articles. Does long term growth hormone treatment in children with idiopathic short stature improve their height as adults? How effective and safe […]
Douglas Noble on GP commissioning
A few weeks ago I attended a conference for GPs on commissioning in the brave new world of GP consortia, proposed in the recent health bill. The day started with a very upbeat GP seeking to enthuse the audience of about 70 participants with a reverberating war cry: “commissioning! who’s up for it?” One hand shot […]
Richard Smith: Adding treatment of hypertension to HIV programmes in rural Kenya
The biggest problem with treating hypertension in rural Kenya is lack of drugs. Health workers are plentiful, and there is an impressive health system—but drugs are scarce. I learnt this when I visited the hospital in Eldoret, a small city in the West of Kenya, and a close by community clinic. My colleagues and I […]
Nick Goodwin: Can we justify the investment in telehealth and telecare?
Last week The King’s Fund hosted the International Congress on Telehealth and Telecare to a packed audience of 350 delegates with another 1600 from 59 countries watching remotely. The main attraction was some early findings from the Department of Health’s Whole System Demonstrator (WSD) Pilot Programme – the largest cluster randomised control trial (RCT) of […]
Kirsten Patrick: Sports medicine and the Olympic legacy
I doubt that this is the first place you’ll read about the 2012 Olympics today as it is 500 days to the start of the games and the tickets go on sale today. It’s also unlikely that this is the first time you are reading that the 2012 Olympics were “sold” to Londoners on the […]