Healthcare services can be frustratingly resistant to innovation. At the recent World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) in Qatar, discussion was focused on how we can change practice within health […]
Guest writers
Tim Spector: Butter or margarine? Food religion challenged
Over a hundred academics recently signed a letter to the British Journal of Sports Medicine and BMJ editors criticising their pro-butter stance and for allowing a “biased” editorial comment which […]
Positioning universities as health care providers is not in the best interest of university students
The announcement earlier this year that UK universities may be graded on their ability to deliver improved student mental health and wellbeing outcomes positions universities as providers of mental health […]
Johanna Ralston: UHC needs to be viewed as more than simply the provision of a service
The announcement by the NHS that it would offer an 800 calorie diet to treat people with type-2 diabetes is its latest attempt to treat a disease whose incidence has […]
Preventing avoidable deaths of people with a learning disability: Is LeDeR enough?
People with a learning disability die on average 16 years younger than people without a learning disability. It is estimated that 1,200 people with a learning disability die avoidably in […]
Jonathan Glass: Looking beyond the computer screen
To reduce medicine to a few pixels on a screen, a lab result, and a virtual clinic is to miss the patient as a whole person, says Jonathan Glass […]
Preserving professionalism in the current healthcare environment
Healthcare has become a victim of its own success, with more patients being treated than ever before, and more patients surviving for long periods with multiple comorbidities. This has put […]
Crying “nanny state” is a way of crushing sensible public discussion
Political slurs and simplistic slogans are damaging democratic discourse and policy making. In place of open and clear debate, we see unfounded assertions, innuendo, and smears. Influential—and often wealthy—elites (they […]
Rebecca Simmons: Using citizen science to boost healthcare improvement research
No one understands the NHS better than those who use it and those who work in it. So research on how to improve healthcare must be informed by the expertise […]
Instrumentalising women’s reproductive vulnerability for political gain: where in the world does it stop?
A move to restrict abortion in Norway is a particularly stark example of the readiness with which women’s reproductive vulnerability is traded as a kind of political capital […]