Simon Bourne, a Consultant Respiratory Physician from Southampton, gave a great talk today on the new approaches to treating COPD that he and his team have developed. The care pathway cleverly integrates secondary, primary and community-based clinical care with research. But what really came across was the importance of working closely with patients to improve [...]
Could Facebook help prevent future health scares?
A mismanaged food health crisis in Germany has left an estimated 35 people dead and thousands more infected with E.Coli. As a result, the European Commission is picking up a €210m compensation tab and the total cost to farming is estimated at €500m.
Epidemiologists in Germany recently ended days of confusion for consumers, [...]
Liking and loving in the digital age
A thought-provoking article by Jonathan Franzen in the New York Times:
http://nyti.ms/l4zHRr
NHS change is happening
With lots of publicity around changes to the NHS in the UK, I decided to take a look at how things are developing in my local area, Islington.
Islington PCT, which rebranded as NHS Islington in 2008, is now part of North Central London (NCL) NHS. NCL is one of six ‘clusters’ of PCTs in London [...]
The Wikipedia will see you now
The BBC recently ran a story about Cancer Research UK’s plans to update Wikipedia. CRUK’s aim is to “increase accuracy and clarity” on the site. CRUK has recognised that high levels of Wikipedia usage makes the site a key authority on cancer.
Information services company Experian recently confirmed the importance of Wikipedia in cancer information provision. [...]
Oxygen INTERACT addresses the challenges in medical education
A new offering from Oxygen Health Communications
Products at different stages of their life cycle present different challenges in medical education. At the pre-launch or recently-launched stages the challenge is often to build consensus around product use and establish a role in the treatment pathway. For well-established products, backed by guidelines, effective education can be around [...]
US Pharma – then and now
Benjamin Brandreth was one of the godfathers of health marketing. Born in England in 1807, he moved to the US in 1835 to enhance his business prospects, which involved selling his branded vegetable extract tablets. ‘Brandreth’s Pills’, it was claimed, could purge the blood of harmful toxins.
His early attempts at marketing involved some unconventional approaches, [...]
When did a pie chart last get a standing ovation?
Being able to visualise complex data, to generate insights, is part of Oxygen’s new approach to stakeholder mapping. This interesting article from the BBC talks about the art of making information beautiful.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8901376.stm
Is free newspaper content a good thing?
Today’s Times is the 70,000th issue of the newspaper – which has recently become the first to ‘break ranks’ and charge a subscription fee for its online edition.
It’s a bold move, given that some readers are likely to switch to sources of free news content, such as the BBC or guardian.co.uk.
The Times’ decision should be [...]
About Richard Oakley
Oxygen was launched in September 2009 by Richard Oakley. Following a degree in life sciences, Richard worked in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries before moving into health communications in 1997.
