One of the great pleasures of living in London is that a friend can email you (in this case from Salamanca) and say: “Hey, did you know Clay Shirky, a […]
Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Richard Smith: US health reform – good or bad?
Is US health reform a “monumental system transformation or a fatally flawed compromise?” This was the question addressed last night by Alan Gerber, doctor, economist, health policy expert, government adviser, […]
Richard Smith: Are doctors part of the solution or part of the problem?
The Royal College of Physicians and various other medical bodies want doctors to be serious about tackling the social determinants of health, and have held a conference on the topic. […]
Richard Smith: University of California takes on Nature Publishing Group
The University of California has told the Nature Publishing Group that it will suspend its subscriptions to the group’s 67 journals if it does not relent over its decision to […]
Richard Smith: Do I belong to a “failed generation?”
Baby boomers—those of us born between the end of the war and the early 60s—are a failed generation,” said Alex Jadad, chief innovator and founder, Centre for Global eHeath Innovation […]
Richard Smith: The rise and rise of “polypathology”
Almost unnoticed by medical schools and health systems the nature of health care has changed radically. The traditional medical model is “patient admitted, diagnosed, treated, cured, sent home,” and the […]
Richard Smith: Break the English NHS into regions?
“If a minister from England asked you about breaking the English NHS into regions, what would you say?” I asked this of a senior official in the Andalucian ministry of […]
Richard Smith on the joy of walking
My wife hates walking. For her it means trudging through the rain and mist, cold, exhausted, wet to her underwear, and with five miles still to go to a smelly […]
Richard Smith: Where are the women leaders?
At the end of my class on leadership at Warwick Medical School comes a dreadful moment. I’ve enjoyed myself and am packing up, when the only student left, a woman, […]
Richard Smith: Five examples of scaling up
Developing interventions that work to, say, reduce malaria, combat obesity, or prevent cardiovascular disease is hard, but scaling them up to benefit whole populations is harder. Yet the interventions must […]