EMWA conference, day 1

I write this from the EMWA conference in Lisbon, as the serious business of the first day has drawn to a close. I was relieved that all the Dianthus team made it to Lisbon despite the disruption from the ash cloud, even though the other members of the team had a hideous journey and got here far later than scheduled. Still at least they got here.

UK Biobank part 2

I blogged about the UK Biobank study back in January. My two main concerns were that the NHS had passed on my personal data without my consent to the UK Biobank team, and that the UK Biobank's literature described the handling of biological samples as "anonymous", when in fact it wasn't. I had other concerns too. In short, I wasn't very happy.

EMWA conference

We (Adam, Debbie, Nancy, and Alice) will be going to the EMWA conference in Lisbon on 11-15 May. We are looking forward to catching up with many old friends and making some new ones.

Adam will be presenting his workshop on statistical analysis of binary data, as well as short seminars on XML for medical writers and CDISC.

Evidence based footcare part 2

As an update to my earlier post about some foot cream that was supposed to stop me getting blisters when training for and running in the Brighton Marathon, I now have the results.

I used the cream on my left foot, but not on my right, for about 3 weeks before the race.

NHS summary care records

I had a letter from the NHS yesterday, telling me that they would like to create a summary care record (SCR) for me. In fact they wanted to do it so much that they were going to go ahead and create one even if I don't ask them to.

Oh goody.

So what does this mean, exactly? Well, it means that my personal medical details would be uploaded onto a giant database that would be available to anyone working in the NHS who happens to be treating me, wherever they are in the country. In theory, the SCR is supposed to improve the safety and quality of patient care by ensuring that relevant staff have the information they need.

Dodgy statistics on airport security

I wonder if I should start a "dodgy statistic of the month" competition? I've just seen a good candidate for the prize this month, namely a story that "Nine out of 10 British people are happy to use full-body scanners being rolled out at UK airports".

Open access publishing

Yesterday's big health story was the news that 5 portions of fruit and veg per day probably doesn't have much of an impact on cutting your cancer risk after all. As regular readers of this blog will know, I don't much like taking such stories at face value, and always prefer to read the original research. Quite often, that shows that the headlines in the popular media are at best incomplete and at worst downright misleading, as we saw only the other day with the hideously misleading stories about breast cancer screening.

Breast cancer screening and peer review

I've been thinking some more about the paper on breast cancer screening that I blogged about last week.

Just to recap, a paper was published last week claiming that the benefits of breast cancer screening comfortably outweigh the harms. This paper was picked up by the media, who reported its conclusions almost entirely without any critical evaluation, simply taking the authors conclusions as established fact.

Breast cancer screening part 2

I blogged yesterday about how a story about the latest research in breast cancer screening had hit the news, even though the research had not yet been published. I noticed later in the day that there were huge numbers of tweets about the study on Twitter, almost all of which seemed to say that it had now been "proven" that breast cancer screening did more good than harm. It's disappointing to see so many people uncritically believing what they hear in the media.

Breast cancer screening

When I listened to the news on the radio this morning, the lead story was about a "major new study" that had found that breast cancer screening does more good than harm.

It's an important question. There are certainly women who are alive today who would not have been alive today if their cancers had not been detected via breast screening. Screening save lives, and that's undeniably a good thing.