Following our visit to Kaiser Permanente, we travelled north to Seattle and visited the Virginia Mason hospital and Group Health. Linked but distinct, the relationship between the two provided a […]
Columnists
Richard Smith: Can information technology improve healthcare?
I doubt that anybody within airlines, financial services, or manufacturing goes to meetings to debate whether information technology can improve what they do. It already has. But in healthcare we’ve […]
Martin McShane: Integrated reflections
Sir William Osler advocated the concept of a “quinquennial brain dusting“: which was my justification for taking a week out to visit some integrated care organisations on the West Coast […]
Richard Smith: More on the uselessness of peer review
I know I’m becoming a bore with all this raving against prepublication peer review, but like all true bores I’m charging on regardless. And I’m fired up by the experience […]
Desmond O’Neill: Donizetti and the GP
It is almost certainly the most unique operatic experience in Europe. As you walk up a narrow street of terraced houses in a small coastal town in south-eastern Ireland, you […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Climate change, health, and security
On 17 October, I was fortunate to attend a daylong seminar at BMA House on “the health and security perspectives of climate change.” Uniquely, this programme pulled together medical and […]
Richard Smith: Battling over safe alcohol limits
Advice on smoking is simple: don’t smoke. But what should be the advice on alcohol? It can’t be “don’t drink,” nor can it be “drink less.” Doctors and governments think […]
Richard Smith: A woeful tale of the uselessness of peer review
Let me tell you a sad tale of wasted time and effort that illustrates clearly for me why it’s time to abandon prepublication peer review. It’s the tale of an […]
Richard Smith: Can we screen for cardiovascular disease using age alone?
Using simply age to screen for cardiovascular disease is as effective as more complicated methods using blood pressure and serum cholesterol, concludes a study published in PloS One in May by […]
David Kerr: Connected for health – an alternative view
There are now two groups of people living with chronic disease, those that are connected and those who are not. In days gone by, “being connected” meant having personal and […]