How strong is the evidence base underlying humanitarian medical assistance? How do you innovate safely to overcome the obstacles inherent in delivering care in conflict settings or to regions where […]
Latest articles
Richard Smith: Returning health to the people
For the first two million years of humans there were no doctors. People were born, flourished, became sick, suffered, and then died without doctors. Probably there were healers who danced, […]
Shared appointments: Medical utopia or dystopia?
In simple supply and demand terms, there are now more people living with chronic disease than there are doctors and other professionals around to help them. So how can the […]
Leonardo Palumbo: Shorter regimens offer new hope to adults and children with MDR TB by halving treatment time
Recent treatment regimens for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) have resulted in patients enduring a gruelling two-year treatment journey, which necessitates taking up to 20 tablets every day with months of daily […]
Nick Watts: Why the global health community is calling on the G7 to pull the plug on coal
When the G7 got together last year, they committed to protecting the poorest and most vulnerable people against the impacts of climate change. One year and a Paris Agreement later, […]
Reena Aggarwal on the politicisation of junior doctors
The term junior doctor has entered into vernacular. We have become a news story with media, politicians, and satirists all using it as subject matter. Last year little was known […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: Once it was just oil, now it’s investigators
A curious thing has happened to pipeline. The word—although originally, as happens with many words, as two separate words—is first recorded by the OED in the early days of the […]
Ian Roberts: Misleading meta-analyses of small trials?
In September 2015, under the banner “Trusted evidence, Informed decisions, Better Health,” a Cochrane Collaboration press release proclaimed to the public that “preoperative statin therapy reduces the odds of postoperative […]
William Cayley: Evidence based medicine—are we really there yet?
“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof, but on the basis of what they find attractive.” Blaise Pascal Can we make evidence based medicine […]
Tara Lamont and Tom Quinn: Driving better care—research and ambulance services
What do you get with twenty pigs and ten humans? Not a giant hog roast or a bad joke about xenotransplantation. No, this appeared to be the full extent of […]