Have you ever tried to get your hands on data from somebody else’s scientific paper? I have, for a meta-analysis. In my experience it is a discouraging task. If data […]
Month: October 2014
The BMJ Today: Swingers, surrogacy, and three parent families
Sexual health and parenthood feature prominently in The BMJ today, in news stories that highlight the need to ensure policies are based on evidence and not prejudice. Jacqui Wise describes […]
William Cayley: Social history consultations and patient time vs patient time
Who are you, what do you need, and how do I figure out how to care for you? Fundamentally, those are the questions that drive every encounter between a doctor […]
Sally Norton: Weight loss—help us to help ourselves
If I hear one more time that keeping your weight down is all about personal responsibility—”just eat less and exercise more”—I will take a double chocolate, banana, and salted caramel, […]
Richard Graham: Is technology changing the brain—how to interpret and advise on the evidence
The recent release of a study by the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, which said that it had found changes in the structure of the brain caused by technology […]
The BMJ Today: Get your sums right
The big news today is the publication of the chief executive of NHS England Simon Stevens’s five year plan for the NHS. As Gareth Iacobucci reports in The BMJ today, […]
Neal Maskrey: How do we become an expert?
We humans often use analogies to help us solve problems. From our memory, we identify a problem similar to—but not exactly the same as—the one we are currently faced with, […]
James Raftery: NICE and value based pricing—is this the end?
Since Andrew Lansley announced in 2010 that the NHS would in future use “value based pricing” in its purchases of pharmaceuticals, civil servants and (more recently) the National Institute for […]
The BMJ Today: Stop reviewing GP crisis and plan a solution
Two articles just posted on thebmj.com focus on general practice—the crisis that is engulfing it, how it suffers at the hand of political promises, and what action can preserve its […]
Wilm Quentin: NCDs and the private sector—part of the problem or part of the solution?
One of the last sessions of the European Health Forum Gastein aimed to find answers to the question of how to engage the private sector in the prevention and control […]