WORD ON THE STREET -- The Harley Street "Blog"
This blog highlights and discusses issues of relevance to patients and customers within the UK health economy. Unless otherwise indicated, the author is HSW chief executive Tam McDonald. If you would like to respond to anything written here, or discuss making a contribution yourself, please e-mail tam@harleystreetworld.com.
Monday 18 October 2010
Our new corporate video puts Harley Street front and centre
Have a look at the video we have just uploaded to the home page. Featuring some top names from the worlds of medicine and sport, it shows what can be done when well-known names such as Harley Street and the Olympics are linked in a powerful cause. Our panel discussion looked at the difference that exercise can make to a healthy lifestyle, and longer versions of the video recordings of this discussion will be uploaded shortly. On the same day, Harley Street World was helping Informa PLC with its second annual wireless healthcare conference, at which delegates from round the world came to London to consider how these two dynamic business sectors are collaborating. We chaired another panel discussion involving top doctors from Harley Street and the Mayo Clinic, and filmed a number of interviews with senior executives from companies like BT and conference sponsors Qualcomm.
Wednesday 6 October 2010
Harley Street PLUS The Olympics: WHAT an opportunity
We filmed a panel discussion a couple of weeks ago, bringing together an interesting trio of speakers in support of the idea that top doctors and sportspeople can join to powerful effect in promoting the interests of healthy living. One of Harley Street’s rising stars of cardiology, Dr Arvinder Kurbaan of The London Heart Centre, teamed up with sports psychologist Miranda Banks and double-gold-winning decathlete Daley Thompson to drive home the point that exercise is about far more than just losing weight. At whatever age you are, and however well or ill you may be, doing regular exercise not only makes you feel better but lowers your healthcare costs. And given the health implications of NOT exercising over many years, the potential for bringing just about every medical specialty into a more active partnership with the world of Olympic sport is, as the Americans like to say, truly awesome.
Wednesday 22 September 2010
Mobile healthcare: partners and people
I chaired a panel discussion at yesterday’s first day of Informa’s annual summit for the Wireless Healthcare industry, in London. What was more striking than the key themes of our discussion – personalisation and the “threat versus opportunity” question in considering the future for wireless devices – was the perspective of the participants. They were all doctors: three of them London-based, and one Skyping in from The Mayo Clinic. It is always a danger with technology that the key development driver becomes the designer’s devotion to features, rather than the user’s understanding of benefits. The conference generally is hammering away at the importance of partnerships in taking the industry forward. What this panel made clear is that doctors are more than willing partners where they are engaged with the process, leaving us all free to focus on the opportunities as they will inevitably emerge.
Friday 17 September 2010
Diet, exercise and the binary challenge
Whether it is this week’s news of the Aberdeen University research into the relationship between diet and exercise, or the way the media “tabloideze” it for easy consumption, the cumulative effect is irksome. Look at this example of this story’s coverage, from the website at www.diet.co.uk. When people insist on taking a line that it is not diet, but exercise; or it’s not exercise, but diet, we really must wonder. First, can people manage to hold two thoughts in their heads at the same time; and second, do they ever pause to consider how many people will digest all this headline-grabbing? People will say: okay, if it is not that, then I don’t have to worry about that. Actually, it’s elements of both; always was, always will be; and ANYway: we exercise for reasons other than losing weight, so why are setting these two very good things in opposition?
Monday 13 September 2010
Decathlon is a fantastic metaphor for the balanced healthy life
Last Friday’s news that double Olympic champion Daley Thompson is teaming up with Harley Street World’s Sports & Vitality TV channel is good for all kinds of reasons. Not the least of these is the significance of the event that brought Daley to the attention of the world in the 1980s. The decathlon requires that athletes balance a mixture of skills and activities in scoring the optimum number of points. In this it serves as a metaphor for balanced living. Out on the track and in the field, it is possible to throw that balance out of whack: over-train for one event and diminish your performance in a second event; for example, bulk up for one of the power events, like the shot put, and find yourself running more slowly on the track. Likewise in life: you won’t get the most out of your physical activity if you don’t eat properly.
Watch Daley winning his 1984 gold medal.
Friday 10 September 2010
New alliance in promoting sport and tackling obesity
Double decathlon champion Daley Thompson is joining a top team of sports and medical specialists at a London event later this month, highlighting the efforts of Harley Street World in addressing the challenge of obesity and to promote healthier lifestyles. This is big news, promoting a massive opportunity. After all, the London Olympics in less than two years’ time will see the eyes of the world on the UK. It will present our country with all the inspiration it needs to move sports and a commitment to enduring fitness back into the mainstream of British life. If we care about a proper Olympic legacy, how about arresting and reversing what is truly becoming an obesity “epidemic”? A legacy of smart sports stadiums, rebuilt neighbourhoods and new railway links is wonderful, of course. Can we do more? How about a country full of healthier children? Go here for more on this.
Wednesday 8 September 2010
To Band, or not To Band
Once again the costs and value associated with gastric surgery are in the news, with the customary confusion between, first, what makes clinical sense and, second, who must bear the cost, therefore, of doing the sensible thing. The focus today (go to any news website: it’s all over the place) is on funding this surgery as an investment that pays off in the long run through improved quality of life and lower treatment costs in the future. So far, so sensible, but there are lots of gray areas even here: differences between the older and the younger obese, for example, or the psychological dimensions that are not going to be addressed by surgery on its own. But even allowing for the “surgery as good investment” argument, it remains unclear – and it will become less clear as the public purse strings tighten – why the NHS must necessarily stand foursquare behind this “investment”.
Tuesday 7 September 2010
Bring on personalised medicine
Controversy surrounding the prescribing of Avandia for diabetes patients highlights the problem with “old-style” blanket approaches to large communities of patients. It also whets the appetite for the evolving revolution in personalised medicine, one feature of which will be the potential for treating disease on a much more focused basis. As things stand, the public argument is played out pretty much on the basis that fear of increased risk of heart attack for some leads to a conclusion that the prescribing of the drug must be banned for all. The manufacturer – in this case Glaxo – argues reasonably (while no doubt sensitive to the fine line it treads) that proper monitoring by GPs should optimise the effect of the drug for those who can benefit from it without their patients suffering from any increased risk of heart attack. We clearly need to know more about the circumstances that increase such risks.
Monday 6 September 2010
What would a healthy Olympic legacy look like?
With all the talk about an Olympic legacy, we might reflect on the impact of the 2012 Games on the health of the nation. Of course we can talk about urban regeneration of London’s East End, and improving the capital’s public transport. But here’s a question: if child obesity rates are running at 30% two years before the London Games (as they are) and it transpires that this rate is as high, or higher, two years after the Games are over, will we have missed an opportunity? Now is the time for a new and vital alliance between the worlds of sports & healthcare. Our nation can be fitter, not fatter. Our children will outlive us, and thrive. The foundation of this achievement will be one of the country’s long-established areas of excellence: the doctors of Harley Street. Watch this space for news of more exciting developments.
Friday 3 September 2010
You are a preening narcissist; I’m merely having work done
There’s a bemusing insight into human nature in this morning’s story about a piece of research undertaken by a sociologist from the University of Aberdeen. Dr Debra Gimlin reports that women tend to create the notion of a “surgical other” to rationalise cosmetic procedures undertaken by other women as being driven by vanity and obsession, without due consideration of the risks. For themselves, of course, it was more about a considered restoration of their “natural look”. This “perception management” reflex is the very cornerstone of human nature. We see it everywhere in the eternal tussle with self-indulgence. So I have the obesity gene, you are a fat slob. I’m a social drinker, you are an alcoholic. And anyway, I have a highly stressful life that I manage with a wise deliberation of which Socrates would approve. But you, my self-deluding friend: you need to get a grip.
Ready for your Morning Smile? Go here.
Thursday 2 September 2010
“Personalisation” in healthcare and in wireless technology
Two industries that are talking a lot about personalisation – developing services to match the needs of individual people – are healthcare and wireless telecommunications. On the one hand, advances in medicine and genetics in particular are enabling doctors to deal with disease very much more on a patient-by-patient basis. With wireless technologies, customers can easily customise mobile phones to best serve their own requirements. It is no coincidence that these sectors are coming together in a big way. I look forward to chairing a panel discussion of clinicians with interests in both industries, at Informa’s Mobile Healthcare Industry Summit in London later this month. The key question: does more “electronically connected healthcare” threaten the traditional methods of delivering health services, or is it more about “extending clinical reach” of doctors everywhere? Watch this space for further developments, or go here for more information about the Summit itself.
Tuesday 31 August 2010
Doctors: more like counsellors than mechanics
Normal service is resumed after a restorative week’s holiday in Ireland. An interesting comment in the Irish press came from a doctor who observed that people should not “outsource” responsibility for their health as they might look to their mechanics to repair their cars. This is doubly interesting. On the surface, doctors are not just fixers who get on with the technical stuff while we step out for coffee. They are at best counsellors walking alongside us as we get on with the “24/7” business of looking after our bodies and minds. And the comparison with the car is interesting, too. While a car can be a vital tool of transport, it is extraneous to most of what we do and who we are. How we look after ourselves defines us as people and affects our families and futures. What mechanic ever existed who could assume responsibility for all that?