Disadvantaged groups of the population tend to have low rates of access to primary care, yet have a greater incidence of chronic diseases. Earlier and more frequent visits to a healthcare […]
Month: September 2014
Readers’ editor: Inserts in the print issue
If you shake the current print issue of The BMJ, a cluster of inserts fall to the ground, among them a wine club promotion, an online menswear retailer, and a […]
Anand Bhopal: Improving clinical consultations—one computer key at a time
Modern medicine is an increasingly wary place for the digitally illiterate. With medical records turning electronic and computers springing up at the bedside, there is little hiding place for doctors […]
Richard Smith: Using data to improve care and reduce waste in health systems
Annual expenditure on healthcare in the United States is currently $2.8 trillion, and about a third of it is wasted, says the Institute of Medicine. The sum wasted is about […]
The BMJ Today: Thinking diagonally
National commitments to reducing global CO2 emissions are in the spotlight again after the recent United Nations talks. Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published their strongest statements yet […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—29 September 2014
NEJM 25 September 2014 Vol 371 1189 This week we start with mepolizumab. Before we know it, we encounter losmapimod. Enough is enough. I think the World Health Organization should […]
The BMJ Today: Death talk in India
How viable is a system of “verbal autopsy” to determine future health policy in a country where most deaths occur outside hospitals, are not attended by doctors, and are not […]
Neal Maskrey: When paradigms shift
When paradigms shift it’s always disconcerting. Thomas Samuel Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962 and it’s become a decisive text on the nature of science. He used […]
The BMJ Today: Beyond doing no harm, helping can get tough
Medicine can do great things, but at today’s thebmj.com things look rather bleak. Nine out of 10 people who are transferred to hospital with cardiac arrest don’t survive to discharge. Some […]
David Lock: Avastin and Lucentis—It’s time for NHS commissioners to act rationally by limiting the choices for wet AMD patients
The news that a Cochrane Review has concluded that Avastin (bevacizumab) is as safe as Lucentis (ranibizumab) to treat patients with wet age related macular degeneration (“wet AMD”), along with other […]