Interview with Gerald Midgley by Dr David Somekh DS: Gerald, pleased to be speaking to you again. Can you tell us what’s going on in your current work that you find especially exciting? GM: I think the really interesting thing right now is where we are in terms of the sudden realization that systems thinking…
Defining ‘digital’ (courtesy of Advisory group member Ales Bourek): Progress is a result of the joint interaction of people, processes, power and tools The source of “power” has changed only four times in history (manpower, horsepower, steam, electric power). Every new power needed the modification of tools, processes and behaviour of people to improve productivity.…
By Bernie Merkel, Community Member EHFF It sounded simple enough: the invitation was to write about one major health issue of the last twenty years, what if anything it has taught us, and how things could and should change in the next ten to twenty years. But the problem is that there are so many…
Blog by David Goldberg At the end of last year, Dr Atul Gawande wrote an article in the Medical Journal ‘Annals of Medicine’ which caused sufficiently interest to be reprinted in the New Yorker magazine. The link to the whole article is here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-hate-their-computers Essentially this is a thought piece about the benefits and is…
By Bernard Merkel (EHFF community member) Fifty years ago the World Health Organization agreed the Alma Ata Declaration which among other things emphasized the key role of primary care within health system, not least to help achieve equity in health (which means, very crudely put, ensuring that everyone has fair access to healthcare resources) Since…
By Bernard Merkel (EHFF community member) Since the start of the year the NHS in the UK has been in a state of crisis. How do I know this? Well, I am constantly told so by the media, senior health professionals, such as the heads of 67 hospital emergency departments, and assorted politicians. There are…
By Bernard Merkel (EHFF community member) The European Health Forum Gastein (EHFG) was set up 20 years ago with the aim of becoming an influential conference on health policy in Europe – perhaps the most influential. I suppose the general idea was to create a kind of Davos World Economic Forum for health policy. The…
By Bernard Merkel Nowadays I don’t often get surprised by articles on how national health systems are performing, or how they compare. Usually I find they simply tell me things I already know or suspect: they are all trying to cope with the growing demand for health services, particularly from their ageing populations, they are…
By Bernard Merkel A couple of weeks ago the EU marked its 60th birthday – or more accurately it was the 60th anniversary of the signing of the original Treaties of Rome which set in motion the whole process which has led to the EU as we know it today. In an editorial to mark…
Post by: Henk den Uijl – Policy advisor at NVTZ | PhD candidate at VU Amsterdam | Dutch EVY team In our search for a better future health care in Europe, the central problems that are usually brought forward are an aging population, low health literacy, medical paternalism, high costs and ‘over-treatment’ or iatrogenesis. This…