At the start of my internship, a 16-year-old girl was brought into the emergency room; she was in a coma. She had been sick for a long time, and her family abandoned her as they thought she was pregnant. It was her neighbour who brought her to the hospital. The girl was very skinny for […]
Read More… from How can mobile technology contribute to the improvement of health in Africa?
“Our team of scientists at Imperial College, London have developed a robotic rectum to help doctors and nurses detect prostate cancer. A rectal examination is often the first test a doctor or nurse uses to recognise a problem prostate. This determines whether they send a patient for further tests. The walnut-size gland sits below a man’s bladder, and […]
Smiley yellow faces are not just for emojis. We decided to use this familiar symbol on our new app to help people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome to identify whether supermarket products are suitable for them. IBS is a common condition which can be debilitating but we know that many IBS sufferers find relief if they […]
In rural areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Africa’s second largest country with vast fertile lands and thousands of lakes, rivers and streams, one in ten people do not have enough food to eat. Food insecurity – the “availability and adequate access at all times to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to maintain […]
Read More… from Monitoring food security data through mobile technology
As a physician who started out in geriatrics, I did not expect to end up researching and developing medicine for mothers and newborns. But as many of you reading this blog will know all too well, medicine is a career that can take you in unusual and unpredictable directions. When, as a junior doctor, I […]
Read More… from From mouthwash to medicine: innovation can come from unexpected places
Is TV doctoring become the modern day equivalent of the Victorian freak show? And are doctors who become presenters on shows like Embarrassing Bodies and Jeremy Kyle’s Emergency Room dishonouring the sacred principles enshrined in the Hippocratic Oath? These were some of the questions raised in a heated debate last week at the inaugural London […]
Read More… from London Press Club and Hippocratic Post Debate
As I write in a patient’s notes in clinic, with the end of my pen in my mouth, I fall into a reverie thinking of the fully paperless NHS, which Jeremy Hunt has promised by 2018. The urgency for the digital agenda is driven by the growth of the data underlying every aspect of healthcare. […]
Read More… from Data, data everywhere, but are doctors ready?
The liver, which is the largest organ in the body, has a variety of important functions. As the main organ controlling human metabolism it is tasked with regulating levels of glucose, amino acids and lipids, while storing glycogen and producing bile acids. It myriad array of functions includes chemical modification of complex chemicals that can […]
#BringOutYerNulls is being used on twitter to help highlight the challenge of publishing so-called “null results” – when no effect is seen. For example, in an experiment comparing a group of men and women on a parallel parking task, a null result would indicate that males and females did not differ in their ability to […]
Healthcare is dominated by women. In the NHS 52 per cent of GPs are female, 85 per cent of nursing directors are female, and 54 per cent of doctors-in-training are female. Despite this, healthtech is distinctly lacking in the female touch. This may not come as a surprise in light of the well-recognised, though poorly […]
Read More… from Why More Women Should Consider Doctor-preneurship