This will be my last blog from Tanzania. I’m going to spend a couple of days visiting the island of Zanzibar – pure vacation, nothing to do with work – and then begin the trek home. My time here has not been as fulfilling as I had hoped, which naturally has been disappointing. Nonetheless there have been positive […]
Matthew Billingsley: Telehealthcare, integration and innovation
Last week I attended the International Congress on Telehealth and Telecare at the King’s Fund, which was an opportunity to discuss the current opportunities in telehealthcare. The focal point for the conference was the presentation of the Department of Health’s Whole System Demonstrator (WSD) pilot project, which invested £31m in a trial of 6,000 users […]
Muir Gray: Viva Wittgenstein
The single greatest influence on my work has been the inscrutable, often incomprehensible Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher and MRC Lab Technician. Much of his writing I find very difficult. The early paragraphs in Philosophical Investigations are a good introduction but even easier, for me, was the great Ray Monk Biography and the fascinating account of the […]
Martin McShane: Phoenix – myth or reality?
I attended, what I think, was the last National Patient Safety Forum last week. I have been a member since it was set up following the publication of Safety First. I was worried that safety was going to get neglected as the National Patient Safety Agency’s abolition was announced in the bonfire of the quangos. […]
Tony Delamothe: TED Day 3: Of revolutions, algorithms, and wonder
By the end of the third day it was clear that one of the major conference themes had become “Revolution 2.0,” political upheaval facilitated by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. In the words of one speaker, “the internet didn’t cause the revolutions,but it allowed them to happen.” Day one had had Al-Jazeera’s director general on stage […]
Monica Jackson: the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake
Two minutes’ silence were observed on Tuesday to mark one week passing since the earthquake. I was in the hospital canteen and at the end of the silence a prayer was read by members of staff. In some ways it was hard to believe a whole week had flown by, at the same time it […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 7 March 2011
JAMA 2 Mar 2011 Vol 305 913 A friend recently began a piece on outcomes research with Bishop Joseph Butler’s maxim, “Every thing is what it is, and not some other thing.” If a trial like SOLVD is designed to measure the effect of a particular ACE inhibitor on survival in people with symptomatic left […]
Tony Delamothe: TED Day Two: The many paths to changing the world
Day 2 began with a choice: a clinic on sand sculpting or breakfast with Al Gore, both scheduled to begin at 7am. I felt I owed it to the VP. I had asked him about the health consequences of global warming after his 2006 TED talk, which formed the basis for “An Inconvenient Truth.” What […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Measles eradication – lofty goal or major distraction?
Immunization really is the bread and butter work of global public health, so that many of us engaged in global health trace our roots to vaccination campaigns for polio or, for the most venerable, smallpox. My first job was as an international monitor and observer on the measles campaigns in Nepal. I still have projects […]
Chris Ham: Education, integration, and involvement: three key steps to quality improvement
Taking time out from the debate about NHS reform, I visited Intermountain Healthcare (IHC) in Salt Lake City, Utah, to find out what makes it one of the most admired health care systems in the US, and to discover what the NHS could learn from this organisation. […]