31 March 2017
Dr Ryan Buchanan has been working with hard to reach communities on the Isle of Wight to uncover the hidden population of people with the devastating illness Hepatitis C.
He has found that by training pharmacy staff to take tests at local chemists he was able to engage with drug users who would be reluctant to come into contact with more formal NHS services.
Here he explains the success of his research which is coming to and end in the next few months
Dr Ryan Buchanan - Hepatitis C treatment with hard to access groups from NIHR CLAHRC Wessex on Vimeo.
Overloaded A&Es – Have we got this all wrong? Dr Brad Keogh
Why do we need evidence? At a time when the NHS has limited resources and increases in demand for its services, it seems prudent to only make changes to the service once you are reasonably certain that what you might do may be in the interest of the patients and staff in the system. By enforcing top-down changes to services with little or no evidence of benefit to patients or staff we are using more of this precious resource for no clear benefit. As an engineer coming into the healthcare sector several years ago to do data analytics, it has always surprised me how few decisions in the management of NHS services are made with robust quantitative analysis. It is also a contrast to the evidence based decision making and protocols within medicine. My thought for you: “why can’t we have evidence based service management as well as evidence based medicine?“ read blog >
