Browse by Tags

Given the tremendous headwinds facing the biopharmaceutical industry today, I wonder whether traditional, conservative management – and, like most large corporations, big pharmas are managed incredibly conservatively -- will continue to prove an effective strategy, or whether they ultimately will be run over by smaller companies willing to bet on a larger vision, leanly executed. Read More...

I am tremendously excited by the potential synergies between digital health and medical product development; capturing this value, however, will require a sophisticated understanding -- not only of the technologies, but also of the specific functional needs and tacit local politics of the organization that hopes to deploy them. Read More...

Natasha Curry, of the Nuffield Trust, explores Japan's long-term care insurance system and the lessons we can learn about caring for an ageing population While changing demographics are putting considerable pressures on health and care systems in all Western countries, nowhere is it more acute than in Japan. A baby girl born today in Japan can expect to live to 86 and a baby boy to 79. By 2030, almost one in three people will be 65 or older. Meeting the needs of an ageing population, against a backdrop of a diminishing total population, presents an enormous challenge for its Government. Yet...

It's time to reflect, and work together with those purchasing and providing services to develop policies and deliver change With all residents from Southern Cross care homes now receiving care from new providers, it is a good time to reflect on the social care market – where it has come from and where it is going. Unlike other public services, a market has operated for many years in social care. This has been driven by a range of factors – both from government and from individuals and carers. In residential care, we saw a large expansion in private care home provision in the 1980s, and then...

Social workers are increasingly complaining of unmanageable caseloads but while some say they now step in only in a crisis, others say practices include manipulating the system. Jessica Fuhl reports "It is not unusual for social workers to not to be able to sleep. We're under pressure, and we live on a 'reactive crisis' approach to our work. There's a huge amount of work and it's increasing." Rachel Smith works as a safeguarding manager in a local authority in the south west. Since the death of Baby P in 2007 she says proceedings have increased by 49%. On a day-to...

The government wants greater integration between health and social care, apparently, but little thought has been given as to how this will be achieved, says Bob Hudson Guardian readers woke up on Thursday to a remarkable headline – David Cameron orders merging of health and social care . Health secretary Andrew Lansley has been told, it was said, to "drive through the changes". Could over 60 years of frustrating fragmentation be coming to an end so swiftly and simply? The occasion of the story is a new report from the establishment think tanks, the King's Fund and Nuffield Trust ...

One lesson to emerge from Southern Cross is the need for better clarity in the roles of providers, commissioners, regulators and central government, argues Richard Humphries What happens if a big care provider fails? Reverberations from the demise of Southern Cross continue, with the latest report from Commons public accounts committee taking the government to task for not monitoring market developments or having clear arrangements to ensure that residents' care is not jeopardised. With widespread public concern about the incursion of private equity into the care home market and the sheer scale...

Staff vacancies and insufficient time to test new procedures put the regulator into serious difficulty, auditor finds The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has missed deadlines for registering health and social care providers, and levels of compliance and inspection activity have fallen significantly, says a National Audit Office (NAO) report. The document says that when the CQC was formed in 2009 as the independent regulator of health and adult social care services in England, it had to merged three existing regulators to establish a new organisation. It was also charged with implementing a new regulatory...