Although World Patient Safety Day passed us by a few months ago, it is still important to reflect on this year’s targets and their progress as 2021 slowly draws to a close. The theme chosen by the World Health Organisation (WHO) this year was ‘safe...
Almost everyone has taken medication to prevent or treat an illness at some point in their life. However, according to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) 2017 publication ‘Medication Without Harm’, unsafe medical practises are a leading cause of harm in healthcare systems across the world....
The United Nation’s seventeen sustainable development goals (SDGs) came into force in 2016. The set of goals is targeted for achievement by 2030 and involves targets such as improving food security and sustainably managing forests worldwide. Although all the SDGs are equally important, the coronavirus...
A little reflection will make anyone who tries to predict the future of healthcare nervous. After all, who could have said anything in early 2020 that turned out to be in any way accurate about the year to come! I do have the advantage of having...
Amazon had revenues of $280 billion in 2019- not bad for an online bookshop founded in 1994. According to McKinsey [1], 35% of what Amazon customers buy comes from recommendations generated by the company’s algorithms. Netflix, another company founded at a similar time, has revenues...
Much of the focus on serious incident investigations is on the “How?”. People give a lot of thought to the processes, policies and procedures around investigations – not to mention to the filling in of template documents. The focus is on getting the job done. In...
Technology is everywhere reshaping our lives. Former Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell, however, believes that healthcare is lagging behind this trend. Writing in the foreword to a new report[1] on the benefits of Technology-Enabled Care Services published by PPP (Public Policy Projects, a think-tank), Dorrell says...
Amid the mass of uncertainty, we can all agree that Covid-19 has driven home the importance of digital technology. This is certainly true of the NHS, where technology has become embedded at a rate that previously seemed impossible. But, while Covid-19 is on everyone’s minds, the...
COVID-19, as the disease is known, has created a formidable workload for our healthcare system over the last couple of months, whether it is building the NHS Nightingale Hospitals, re-organising acute hospitals or building new apps to track the spread of the disease. Many healthcare...
A new year and a new decade find many NHS trusts facing the same problems. In January this year the BBC released an article addressing the huge legal fees the NHS faces. The fees are to settle outstanding claims of clinical negligence, once again highlighting...