The two driving principles of the new NHS Commissioning Board are transparency and participation. If they are applied radically then they can transform the NHS, said Tim Kelsey, National Director […]
Columnists
Muir Gray: Defining the population for systems of care
Read the rest of this series of blogs about designing and planning population based systems of care here. Step 2: Defining the Population Having defined the scope of the system, […]
Richard Smith: Reporting guidelines for case reports
The Equator network of guidelines on reporting health research, a hugely valuable resource, has 200 guidelines, but none of them are for case reports. So as case reports seem to […]
Desmond O’Neill: 50 shades of stroke
Language in Ireland can be tricky and subtle, with many shades of meaning possible for even simple words such as “stroke,” as our minister for health discovered to his chagrin […]
Julian Sheather: Safeguarding adults—respecting freedom, maximising welfare
I was in Bromley recently at an adult safeguarding conference. It was in some respects a melancholy day. We heard about Brent Martin, a 23 year-old with learning disabilities and […]
Richard Smith: Stratified medicine vs the polypill
In the past month I’ve attended contrasting meetings on the polypill and stratified medicine that leave me wondering about the future of medicine. The problem that the polypill tries to […]
Muir Gray: Defining the scope of systems of care
Read the first in this series of blogs about designing and planning population based systems of care here. Step 1: Defining the scope The focus of a system may be: […]
Richard Smith: Stratified, personalised, or precision medicine
Doctors know that many of the patients they treat with drugs will not benefit. Many patients know that too, which may be why some don’t take their drugs. The simple […]
Pritpal S Tamber: Why TEDMED might be the only health conference worth going to
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”—Albert Einstein Healthcare is broken, nowhere more so than in the US where they spend 18% […]
Desmond O’Neill: Anthropology, ageing, and medicine
The Meeting Room of the Royal Irish Academy is one of the hidden gems of academic architecture in Dublin, a city belatedly recognising the richness of its Victorian heritage (1). […]