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 […]
Month: January 2013
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
Desmond O’Neill: Turner, medical history, and ageing
Limiting access adds savour to most sensory experiences, a sentiment captured by Patrick Kavanagh in his poem Advent: “through a chink too wide comes in no wonder.” A narrow aperture […]
Kieran Walsh: Should we be more short term in our thinking about medical education?
Putting the horse before the cart always seems like a sensible idea. And so it is with funding initiatives—it seems sensible to invest in starting up sustainable projects that will […]