Perhaps I should have realised from the title, but when I began to read The Book of Dead Philosophers I didn’t expect it to be funny. In fact Simon Critchley’s stories of how “190 or so” philosophers died and some of what they said about death is at times hilarious—as well as rich with meaning. [...]
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Slowly but surely the internet is transforming industries—finance, travel, music, entertainment—but so far it has had little impact on public services. But can it transform public services and if so how and when? These were the questions that ran through a day of “cocreation” organized by Patient Opinion, an organisation founded by GP Paul Hodgkin [...]
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We are getting some nice coverage about the Stelios Award. First to cover is the The Deaf Blog, a blog about the achievements of people with hearing difficulties.
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Last week’s conference to launch Edinburgh University’s Global Health Academy left me thinking that priorities in global health may be very wrong. David Molyneaux from Liverpool said that an alien observing earth for the first time would think that it had only three diseases: AIDS, TB, and malaria. He is one of the “three dinosaurs [...]
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Last week I was privileged to hear a brilliant talk—by Nicholas Janni—on what Henry V or rather Shakespeare has to teach us about leadership. Prince Harry was, as most people know, a dissolute youth, hanging out with drunks, pimps, whores, and undesirables with the great Falstaff chief among them. But when his father, Henry IV, [...]
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Demos is one of my favorite think tanks, a left-of-center research institution responsible for many of Tony Blair and New Labour’s policies. Peter Bradwell and his colleagues are running an interesting research project through a series of focus groups with citizens in different parts of the UK. One of the topics is how personal medical [...]
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“I would like to congratulate Mohammad for reaching the shortlist of this year’s award, it is not an easy task to be nominated because there was stiff competition. I have been impressed by Mohammad and all short listed entrepreneurs and will look forward to awarding the prize to the winner and seeing how they use [...]
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I attended the launch event for the NESTA report by Laura Bunt and Michael Harris, The Human Factor: how transforming healthcare to involve the public can save money and save lives. The three speakers were Andrew Lansley, Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Tim Kelsey, Chairman of Dr Foster Intelligence, and Jonathan Kestenbaum is Chief [...]
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I’ve just spent five days—yes, five days—talking about health literacy. Before my five day conversation I’d never thought much about health literacy, but now I see myself as an expert. Pick a small enough subject and you can be a world expert in about 20 minutes. But health literacy is actually a big subject and [...]
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Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli
Dr Richard Smith