Medicine and leading edge technologies have always gone hand in hand over the years, and with the recent explosion of information technologies, medical practice has certainly been at the forefront. Over the recent past in the United Kingdom, there has been a dramatic shift in the way medical records have been created and stored. There is an undoubted move towards using electronic medical records as the gold standard of recording medical information and in primary care in this country, this is virtually the normal mode of practice. Most primary care units are either paper lite or paper free. more…

After Monday’s statement to the House of Commons from Andy Burnham (you can watch all ten hours of the commons session here), the RCGP emailed members to summarise this and other developments.

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So they’ve been at it again, the men in white coats. Putting on their grey beards and playing God, getting the jump on poor old mother nature. There are times when you could almost feel sorry for her. All those pipette-pushers forever tunnelling deeper and deeper into her mysteries. Leave her alone, I can almost hear myself saying, leave the poor old dame a few rags of the unknown to clothe herself in. And while you’re at it, leave us, leave poor bewildered modern us something to wonder at and to revere. But then I remember that this is a piece for the BMJ and it is scientists I am talking to, people who surely demand more from their arguments than soft-eyed sentiment. more…

How international do we want to be? Many organisations find themselves discussing that question in a globalising world—and most don’t find it easy to answer. Britain itself can’t answer the question, flirting with the US and remaining semi-detached in Europe. I’ve spent the day trying to answer the question with an organisation—let’s call it the British Association of Ducks (BAD). more…

Government deliver new advice for pregnant women

A storm erupted over the weekend about the government’s advice to pregnant women on swine flu. It all started with the National Childbirth Trust issuing advice that suggested that women consider delaying conception, as their director Belinda Phipps explains: more…

Although many see me as sociable, and in some respects I know this is true, in reality it is only partly me. In many ways I am much more at home being unsociable, a trait which I believe generally deserves recognition (and respect) as a positive, rather than a negative, attribute. Indeed, I feel strongly that we now live in an over-sociable society (witness, the compulsive use of texts, twitters and Facebook), that a bit of unsociableness would do us the world of good.  more…

I’m fed up of being told not to panic over swine flu. If I want to panic then I’ll panic. I’ll run naked and screaming down the street imploring my neighbours to do the same.

But then I realise that I don’t know what exactly you do when you panic. Do you turn to jelly, burst into tears, take to your bed, shoot yourself? I’d better look in the dictionary, especially as there presumably won’t be time for that when I do decide to panic. more…

Yesterday was a busy day for swine flu in the UK. First we learnt that 65,000 people could die from it in the UK if the government’s worst case scenario predictions come true. That’s three times more than the excess deaths during the 1999/2000 winter flu season and double the number in the two previous global pandemics in 1957-8 and 1968-9.

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Scientific publishing is no longer just about printing journals but increasingly includes online publishing, broadcasting, and creating online communities. A talk I attended given by Timo Hannay at University College London on 15 July demonstrated just how much scientific publishing has evolved and in how many ways it will still change. It was entitled “The future of scientific publishing”, but as Timo pointed out, there are many futures in store for scientific publishing. more…

New cases of swine flu went up by 42% in England last week according to new figures from the Royal College of General Practitioners. Children are the most affected with  160 new cases of influenza like illness (ILI) per 100,000 population in children aged 5 to 14. The rate of increase in flu in the south of England has dropped to only 4% - bad news for headline writers who must wait a little longer before “Swine Flu Epidemic Declared in London” can be splashed on the front pages. more…