5 hrs ago·edited 5 hrs agoLiked by Carl Heneghan, Tom Jefferson
Actively encourage everyone to try and be responsible for their own health :-
1. Stop watching MSM, especially the BBC whanever it mentions anything to do with health/disease/epidemics/vaccines/Pfizer/mmRNA etc.
2. Stop reading and if you never have, don't read newspapers - especially The Guardian which ceased to be an investigative newspaper about10 years ago - it is now run by Head Girls and read only by teachers.
3. Walk/exercise in the fresh air for at least an hour a day - (buy a dog and ditch the smartwatch - the dog will be smarter than the watch anyway).
5. Try to enjoy life - despite the bastards in charge ruining it for you.
6.. Avoid hospitals like theplague. Statistics show that more people are ill and die there than anywhere else. (Sorry about that one. Couldn't resist after seeing so many signs at the beginning of Clown World outside GP surgeries and hospitals basically saying if you feel ill, don't come in. Saved the NHS for sure).
We seem to live in a world run by control freaks. Apart from the desired information already being available, as you said, the idea of funnelling more and more aspects of our existence into spy phones looks to me like a fool's errand. What about the all-eggs-in-one-basket risk? We caught a glimpse of that with the Crowdstrike meltdown earlier this year that affected a wide range of businesses. Only last week, Waitrose had a separate computer glitch that meant they could only allow customer in that day who could pay in cash. Then there's the stupidity of thinking that you can make people healthier and/or solve organsations problems with more micro-management.
I've pointed out elsewhere that this 'consultation' reminds me fatally of a 'consultation' instigated by Chairman Mao in the 1950s, called 'Let a thousand flowers blossom' - on the future of the Chinese society. Well, all those who grasped this tiny bit of freedom and participated ended swiftly in re-education camps. Here in the UK I see it as mixture of validating whatever this government wants to do - sugar tax, for example - with the explanation that 'the people want it'. Moreover, this just bring it all one step closer to the Chinese 'social credit scheme' - and why not, didn't SAGE think that following the Chinese into Lockdown was a very good idea?
As for this:
"In 2019, the NHS long-term plan, also known as the 10-year plan, was published. NHS England’s Chief executive, Simon Stevens, said: “As part of the NHS Long-Term Plan, we are going to be using new technologies and treatments to improve patient care and save more lives."
Words fail me! Are the DHSC civil serpents so bereft of ideas, is Labour so bereft of ideas that they think a regurgitation of a five-year-old exercise will do very well again? In a reversal of the Biblical saying, it's now 'old wine into new wineskins' ...
Yes, I heard the health secretary on a radio interview yesterday. I believe he said something to the effect that tech would cure all the nhs woes. I immediately thought of another expensive IT programme being introduced and all healthcare workers needing to be retrained to use it, and I visualised another millions of ££’s getting flushed down the toilet.
I have now had four texts to remind me of an appt with the surgery nurse on my nhs app. Some specialty clinics still using letters to notify pts of their appts, despite most people only receiving post once a week. It would be interesting to know how many IT programs the NHS has tried out.
Since joining Dicky Heart & The Seizures a few years ago I’ve had a watch that does HR and ECGs, a blood pressure monitor, a smart scale, and done the Zoe thing with the glucose monitor. All of this built up the body of evidence that I used finally to bludgeon Bart’s into giving me a second ablation, which worked, and I’m now symptom-free and back to normal.
But I'm not a hypochondriac. I use this stuff to monitor trends, not obsess that for some reason I appear to have put on half a kilo overnight. And these gadgets don't upload direct to the Spine, which I opted out of when it became clear that NHSX had every intention of breaching medical confidentiality by selling access to the database. I'm a techie. I know how these people think.
Speaking of which, I wonder what has happened to the DNA profile of the millions who were, let's say, coerced into the PCR qtip thingy being forced up the nostril (where it hits what's little left of your brain).
In practice the NHS exists primarily for the benefit of its employees, not its customers.
In 2020 we, the customers, were told to stay away from the NHS 'to protect it'. What possible use is there in a health system that doesn't want to see the people who are its apparent purpose?
This is galling. And it only gets more so when you think that many of these customers actually pay into the system in the first place.
One other thing, the whole 'free at the point of use' stuff is so much rubbish. No one appreciates a free good.
I can already access most of my details on the NHS app. Some years ago (it was before I retired from the NHS in 2011, and smartphones were non-existent) I suggested that there should be a "credit card" system that included not only correspondence and consultation details but also test results - including X-rays and scans. Back then our radiologists could assess images at home, but the process was painfully slow. Now with full fibre it is not. So if the revised app can include these all the problems of non-transferred information are solved (though this may require introducing a single imaging system to avoid incompatibilities or the need to have multiple programs.
Some of the ideas put forward by the Streeting/Darzi axis are frankly ridiculous. Darzi trumpeted the "move care to the community/ put specialists in GP centres" in his last reform programme. I was not convinced at the time, and remain opposed, not least because he based his conclusion on a single German polyclinic, and an attempt to open one in the UK failed financially. Taking specialists away from the base is uneconomic; clinic sizes will be reduced; tests cannot be done; patients would have to reattend for results etc. My book "Mad Medicine" dissects this idea in detail, not least because I tried running outreach clinics; by the time I had travelled there, and the GPs had assembled a clientele for me to see, I would have perhaps 4-5 patients where in a hospital clinic I could see double that. X-rays could be taken and reviewed immediately; patients could have their bloods done on a one-stop basis. From the physician's viewpoint they lose the ability to "find a friend". I would often walk a patient round to the orthopaedic clinic for a quick second opinion. When their clinics vanished, as a consequence of a hospital merger, that became impossible and was one of the reasons I took early retirement.
Prevention.. ah, prevention. Evidence that it works? None. And guess what? When Bevan introduced the NHS he thought that its preventative functions would reduce costs! All that happened was that medicine became increasingly adept at treating what was previously untreatable, and often at enormous expense.
My book outlines a few possibilities, recalling all the while that "reform" happened several times in my own clinical experience. We need to take some very hard decisions. These include charging for services (for example, hospital catering - you don't get free food at home - or outpatient and GP consultations); deciding there are some things that the NHS will not do (much of which I term "futility medicine"; introducing a separate insurance system along French lines; stop spending on unnecessary "wokeness"; cut manager numbers; integrate GP and hospital service and abolish the purchaser-provider split, which wastes vast sums on duplicated finance staff; abandon PFI (which sets you up for a long-term mortgage that reduces clinical spending; allow patient to consult specialists directly (as the French do).
We also need to seriously discuss whether some interventions are truly cost-effective. For example, I believe that statins are not. But, you say, they are cheap. Yes, but vast subscribing of a cheap drug is as if not more expensive than prescribing small quantities of an expensive one. NICE should include not just the health costs of a new drug but the socio-economic costs saved by its use. If you analyse expenditure on biologic agents for inflammatory joint disease these things look exorbitant (I outdid the oncologists in drug costs in my last two years in practice) but if you consider that their use keeps patients able to work, and keeps them as taxpayers rather than benefit receivers, they do not.
All of the above will raise an outcry. Our NHS is free! So it must remain! We must do everything (even if it costs £1m per patient to prolong life by a few months)! We must have more hospitals! More staff!
But things have moved on from 1948 and so must we. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.
I don't have a problem with consultation per se - but agree there is too much of it and it is poorly used. Not sure it leads to anything most of the time except delay, waste and an excuse if things don't go well.
Wes and Co don't seem to be addressing the key issue facing the Health Service - an ageing population with long term and usually complex health issues which will generally only get worse. The compassionate care of decline. This is not what the health service was set up to deal with yet it accounts for most of the budget (I think I have heard 70% of the spend goes into this). The care of declining old people (and I am one!) will not be helped much by natty apps. What is needed seems to be good holistic medical care (for example to monitor the whole range of medications and their interactions with each other) linked to proper and responsive social care and connections to activity and support in people's own communities.
There should be a strata of desires. Old fashioned I know but access is the major problem. Technology,so beloved of Blair and Hancock, can wait. Preventive medicine,nice idea, but I'm sure two old geezers can pick the one or two that work. Education,evidence based, on mental wellbeing and what it isn't. Carbohydrate tax to sort the obesity/ diabetes problem.
WHO representative, Dr Rafael Bengoa is attending the NI health online conference on 28 November to 'reboot healthcare recovery' via 'enablers'. Digitalisation is on the agenda. This is Top down driven and makes use of our puppet politicians to drive and implement it. Unless we opt out of The UN/WHO stranglehold we have no choice. Anyone interested in attending can book a place. https://www.policyforumforni.co.uk/conference/NI-Health-24 The new Digital platform is due to go live in my NI Trust on 7 Nov. The software is called Encompass and 'works closely' with Epic Software, which from what I heard causes NHS staff a lot of problems, takes a lot of valuable time which would be better spent on patients. The new system was designed by and will link to Epic. What could go wrong? Patients cannot opt out and will be able to access their own records if they have an NI Direct account. https://dhcni.hscni.net/digital-portfolio/encompass/my-care/. There is no mention of an app as yet, but I'm sure Bill Gates is onto it!!
My natural inclination is to kick repeatedly against anything that involves tech. I never had the nhs app, gave a fake name and phone number during EOTHO and on other occasions, and I will not be downloading any other chuffing apps. Smartwatch? I don't think so. I also know several folks with zero Internet, and no smartphone. What about them, huh Wes??? Bit discriminatory isn't it, all this reliance on lithium and stuff.....no substitute for actually getting off your corpulent backside and MOVING. And I'm not talking about a micro walk to the fridge.
It's just the reinvention of the wheel no. 8,900,987,653.......
Anyone can make a mistake. Any sensible person, confronted with accurately measured facts, may have to revise their opinions.
But telling barefaced lies, whether through hubris, wealth enhancement or for increased power, must be held to account.
Anyone claiming something is "safe and effective" without gold standard evidence to justify it, should go flip burgers for a living.
Anyone talking about "The Settled Science" is an idiot, not to be trusted.
Any "Scientist" or politician or MSM flack (looking at you, BBC, MET Office, Big Pharma stooge etc) who refuses to discuss his dogma, his methodology, should be presumed to be a malicious snake-oil purveyor.
Anyone who has close links to Gates, Soros, Schwab, Fauci, Maurice Strong, and the "Charitable" Billionaires, should be investigated by forensic accountants and held strictly to account.
Actively encourage everyone to try and be responsible for their own health :-
1. Stop watching MSM, especially the BBC whanever it mentions anything to do with health/disease/epidemics/vaccines/Pfizer/mmRNA etc.
2. Stop reading and if you never have, don't read newspapers - especially The Guardian which ceased to be an investigative newspaper about10 years ago - it is now run by Head Girls and read only by teachers.
3. Walk/exercise in the fresh air for at least an hour a day - (buy a dog and ditch the smartwatch - the dog will be smarter than the watch anyway).
4. Stop eating junk food, eat more fresh (preferably organic) whole foods.
5. Try to enjoy life - despite the bastards in charge ruining it for you.
6.. Avoid hospitals like theplague. Statistics show that more people are ill and die there than anywhere else. (Sorry about that one. Couldn't resist after seeing so many signs at the beginning of Clown World outside GP surgeries and hospitals basically saying if you feel ill, don't come in. Saved the NHS for sure).
7. Find sites like this to keep sane.
Totally agree, although I find kicking and punching the bejesus out of folk at karate a lot more therapeutic than walking 🤣😂
We seem to live in a world run by control freaks. Apart from the desired information already being available, as you said, the idea of funnelling more and more aspects of our existence into spy phones looks to me like a fool's errand. What about the all-eggs-in-one-basket risk? We caught a glimpse of that with the Crowdstrike meltdown earlier this year that affected a wide range of businesses. Only last week, Waitrose had a separate computer glitch that meant they could only allow customer in that day who could pay in cash. Then there's the stupidity of thinking that you can make people healthier and/or solve organsations problems with more micro-management.
I've pointed out elsewhere that this 'consultation' reminds me fatally of a 'consultation' instigated by Chairman Mao in the 1950s, called 'Let a thousand flowers blossom' - on the future of the Chinese society. Well, all those who grasped this tiny bit of freedom and participated ended swiftly in re-education camps. Here in the UK I see it as mixture of validating whatever this government wants to do - sugar tax, for example - with the explanation that 'the people want it'. Moreover, this just bring it all one step closer to the Chinese 'social credit scheme' - and why not, didn't SAGE think that following the Chinese into Lockdown was a very good idea?
As for this:
"In 2019, the NHS long-term plan, also known as the 10-year plan, was published. NHS England’s Chief executive, Simon Stevens, said: “As part of the NHS Long-Term Plan, we are going to be using new technologies and treatments to improve patient care and save more lives."
Words fail me! Are the DHSC civil serpents so bereft of ideas, is Labour so bereft of ideas that they think a regurgitation of a five-year-old exercise will do very well again? In a reversal of the Biblical saying, it's now 'old wine into new wineskins' ...
Smartwatches... feeding the worried well.
Yes, I heard the health secretary on a radio interview yesterday. I believe he said something to the effect that tech would cure all the nhs woes. I immediately thought of another expensive IT programme being introduced and all healthcare workers needing to be retrained to use it, and I visualised another millions of ££’s getting flushed down the toilet.
I have now had four texts to remind me of an appt with the surgery nurse on my nhs app. Some specialty clinics still using letters to notify pts of their appts, despite most people only receiving post once a week. It would be interesting to know how many IT programs the NHS has tried out.
Since joining Dicky Heart & The Seizures a few years ago I’ve had a watch that does HR and ECGs, a blood pressure monitor, a smart scale, and done the Zoe thing with the glucose monitor. All of this built up the body of evidence that I used finally to bludgeon Bart’s into giving me a second ablation, which worked, and I’m now symptom-free and back to normal.
But I'm not a hypochondriac. I use this stuff to monitor trends, not obsess that for some reason I appear to have put on half a kilo overnight. And these gadgets don't upload direct to the Spine, which I opted out of when it became clear that NHSX had every intention of breaching medical confidentiality by selling access to the database. I'm a techie. I know how these people think.
Speaking of which, I wonder what has happened to the DNA profile of the millions who were, let's say, coerced into the PCR qtip thingy being forced up the nostril (where it hits what's little left of your brain).
Try a fredom of information on that.
PS even the Police have limits on keeping DNA.
In practice the NHS exists primarily for the benefit of its employees, not its customers.
In 2020 we, the customers, were told to stay away from the NHS 'to protect it'. What possible use is there in a health system that doesn't want to see the people who are its apparent purpose?
This is galling. And it only gets more so when you think that many of these customers actually pay into the system in the first place.
One other thing, the whole 'free at the point of use' stuff is so much rubbish. No one appreciates a free good.
I can already access most of my details on the NHS app. Some years ago (it was before I retired from the NHS in 2011, and smartphones were non-existent) I suggested that there should be a "credit card" system that included not only correspondence and consultation details but also test results - including X-rays and scans. Back then our radiologists could assess images at home, but the process was painfully slow. Now with full fibre it is not. So if the revised app can include these all the problems of non-transferred information are solved (though this may require introducing a single imaging system to avoid incompatibilities or the need to have multiple programs.
Some of the ideas put forward by the Streeting/Darzi axis are frankly ridiculous. Darzi trumpeted the "move care to the community/ put specialists in GP centres" in his last reform programme. I was not convinced at the time, and remain opposed, not least because he based his conclusion on a single German polyclinic, and an attempt to open one in the UK failed financially. Taking specialists away from the base is uneconomic; clinic sizes will be reduced; tests cannot be done; patients would have to reattend for results etc. My book "Mad Medicine" dissects this idea in detail, not least because I tried running outreach clinics; by the time I had travelled there, and the GPs had assembled a clientele for me to see, I would have perhaps 4-5 patients where in a hospital clinic I could see double that. X-rays could be taken and reviewed immediately; patients could have their bloods done on a one-stop basis. From the physician's viewpoint they lose the ability to "find a friend". I would often walk a patient round to the orthopaedic clinic for a quick second opinion. When their clinics vanished, as a consequence of a hospital merger, that became impossible and was one of the reasons I took early retirement.
Prevention.. ah, prevention. Evidence that it works? None. And guess what? When Bevan introduced the NHS he thought that its preventative functions would reduce costs! All that happened was that medicine became increasingly adept at treating what was previously untreatable, and often at enormous expense.
My book outlines a few possibilities, recalling all the while that "reform" happened several times in my own clinical experience. We need to take some very hard decisions. These include charging for services (for example, hospital catering - you don't get free food at home - or outpatient and GP consultations); deciding there are some things that the NHS will not do (much of which I term "futility medicine"; introducing a separate insurance system along French lines; stop spending on unnecessary "wokeness"; cut manager numbers; integrate GP and hospital service and abolish the purchaser-provider split, which wastes vast sums on duplicated finance staff; abandon PFI (which sets you up for a long-term mortgage that reduces clinical spending; allow patient to consult specialists directly (as the French do).
We also need to seriously discuss whether some interventions are truly cost-effective. For example, I believe that statins are not. But, you say, they are cheap. Yes, but vast subscribing of a cheap drug is as if not more expensive than prescribing small quantities of an expensive one. NICE should include not just the health costs of a new drug but the socio-economic costs saved by its use. If you analyse expenditure on biologic agents for inflammatory joint disease these things look exorbitant (I outdid the oncologists in drug costs in my last two years in practice) but if you consider that their use keeps patients able to work, and keeps them as taxpayers rather than benefit receivers, they do not.
All of the above will raise an outcry. Our NHS is free! So it must remain! We must do everything (even if it costs £1m per patient to prolong life by a few months)! We must have more hospitals! More staff!
But things have moved on from 1948 and so must we. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.
I don't have a problem with consultation per se - but agree there is too much of it and it is poorly used. Not sure it leads to anything most of the time except delay, waste and an excuse if things don't go well.
Wes and Co don't seem to be addressing the key issue facing the Health Service - an ageing population with long term and usually complex health issues which will generally only get worse. The compassionate care of decline. This is not what the health service was set up to deal with yet it accounts for most of the budget (I think I have heard 70% of the spend goes into this). The care of declining old people (and I am one!) will not be helped much by natty apps. What is needed seems to be good holistic medical care (for example to monitor the whole range of medications and their interactions with each other) linked to proper and responsive social care and connections to activity and support in people's own communities.
There should be a strata of desires. Old fashioned I know but access is the major problem. Technology,so beloved of Blair and Hancock, can wait. Preventive medicine,nice idea, but I'm sure two old geezers can pick the one or two that work. Education,evidence based, on mental wellbeing and what it isn't. Carbohydrate tax to sort the obesity/ diabetes problem.
This thread on X is very good on how the records issue could be managed without the problems of a mega national database https://x.com/hadleybeeman/status/1848487917741863040
WHO representative, Dr Rafael Bengoa is attending the NI health online conference on 28 November to 'reboot healthcare recovery' via 'enablers'. Digitalisation is on the agenda. This is Top down driven and makes use of our puppet politicians to drive and implement it. Unless we opt out of The UN/WHO stranglehold we have no choice. Anyone interested in attending can book a place. https://www.policyforumforni.co.uk/conference/NI-Health-24 The new Digital platform is due to go live in my NI Trust on 7 Nov. The software is called Encompass and 'works closely' with Epic Software, which from what I heard causes NHS staff a lot of problems, takes a lot of valuable time which would be better spent on patients. The new system was designed by and will link to Epic. What could go wrong? Patients cannot opt out and will be able to access their own records if they have an NI Direct account. https://dhcni.hscni.net/digital-portfolio/encompass/my-care/. There is no mention of an app as yet, but I'm sure Bill Gates is onto it!!
My natural inclination is to kick repeatedly against anything that involves tech. I never had the nhs app, gave a fake name and phone number during EOTHO and on other occasions, and I will not be downloading any other chuffing apps. Smartwatch? I don't think so. I also know several folks with zero Internet, and no smartphone. What about them, huh Wes??? Bit discriminatory isn't it, all this reliance on lithium and stuff.....no substitute for actually getting off your corpulent backside and MOVING. And I'm not talking about a micro walk to the fridge.
It's just the reinvention of the wheel no. 8,900,987,653.......
From Dr Sikora
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13985301/KAROL-SIKORA-know-NHS-patients-need-Mr-Streeting-swift-access-GP-end-record-waiting-lists-no-people-dying-trolleys-E-corridors.html
New ideas?
Not really, but good to remember.
Anyone can make a mistake. Any sensible person, confronted with accurately measured facts, may have to revise their opinions.
But telling barefaced lies, whether through hubris, wealth enhancement or for increased power, must be held to account.
Anyone claiming something is "safe and effective" without gold standard evidence to justify it, should go flip burgers for a living.
Anyone talking about "The Settled Science" is an idiot, not to be trusted.
Any "Scientist" or politician or MSM flack (looking at you, BBC, MET Office, Big Pharma stooge etc) who refuses to discuss his dogma, his methodology, should be presumed to be a malicious snake-oil purveyor.
Anyone who has close links to Gates, Soros, Schwab, Fauci, Maurice Strong, and the "Charitable" Billionaires, should be investigated by forensic accountants and held strictly to account.