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AI in Healthcare requires regulation by the MHRA as a medical device. I don't think that the department of Health has the capacity.

Hi Benedict, Would be interested in any thoughts you had on this very adjacent topic.....https://www.pslhub.org/forums/topic/2396-reimagining-health-and-care-data-systems/

This Human Rights Day (10 December), INQUEST wants to deliver 100 handwritten letters to the Prime Minister calling for an urgent action plan to establish a National Oversight Mechanism. The families we work with all have different journeys in the search for truth and accountability. But they agree: the most important thing is to stop what happened to them happening to anyone else. Too often lessons identified after deaths and disasters do not result in necessary, life-saving change. INQUEST need your help to write, post or hand-deliver 100 letters that make that show why this campaign cannot be ignored. Find out more about how to get involved: https://lnkd.in/e4Xx92DY

Over the past few years I've pondering what is wrong with most of the data systems I interact with. To be honest I've been pondering this for most of my career as I was frequently sent to the dungeon (aka medical records) to review, sometimes also find on the stacks when that was allowed and synthesise it into something. That evolved to doing the same digitally and that is what most data analysts and scientists spend most of their time doing. Granted they generally use more sophisticated techniques then I ever did. That is probably the first concern.....data capabilities have become incredibly good but in big data before it and AI more contemporaneously the problem is as all good data/computing people know garbage in garbage out (for some reason I prefer it to the more British, and therefore correct, rubbish!). Amalgamating data sets, federation (good and bad forms of this....no I don't mean the FDP specifically), SDEs, data linkage etc all are held up with the promise of moving us to the truth. But the real truth is that improving data quality is a wicked problem. So what am I getting at? Well I am interested in how people feel about data management, what they might think about how to shift the entire ecosystem if in fact that is needed to tackle said wicked problem and what the critical non-technical considerations need to be. If there is an appetite I will elaborate and we'll see if we can get some conversation going.

Hi Everyone There has been a great deal of conversations been had in the media surrounding the changes CQC are making in relation to the single assessment changes etc. I was wondering if anyone has a staff briefing pack they are willing to share that gives an overview of the forthcoming changes. Thanks Ian

Are you passionate about improving health and care services? We want you to join our friendly and inclusive team.About ASPiH The Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare (ASPiH) is a UK-wide membership organisation that promotes excellence in simulation-based education and training to improve healthcare quality, safety, and outcomes. We bring together a diverse community of educators, clinicians, researchers, technologists, patients, and system leaders who share a commitment to advancing high-quality, ethical simulation across health and care. For more information please visit our website: https://aspih.org.uk/about/ We're Looking For Two enthusiastic individuals with lived experience of the UK Health and Care system to join ASPiH as a Lived Experience Advisor. No simulation knowledge or experience is required – your lived experience and perspective are what matter most. The role Time commitment- We anticipate that the time commitment for this role will be approximately 60 hours, spread evenly throughout the year. You will also be invited to join us for an additional four days at the ASPiH Conference in Harrogate, from 24 to 27 November 2026. If you are unable to attend these dates, we still encourage you to apply. As a Lived Experience Advisor, you will help: ✅ Inform the Association's strategy and future direction ✅ Contribute to Special Interest Groups (SIGs) ✅ Support conference planning and attendance ✅ Ensure the public voice is embedded throughout ASPiH's work ✅ Guide positive change and help shape a more inclusive association What we offer 💷 Remuneration for your time 🚆 Travel expenses covered 🏨 Accommodation provided where required How to apply Please email [email protected] by 12 October 2026 with: A short biography Your motivations for applying Please keep your application to no more than one side of A4.

I was lucky enough to have a hysteroscopy plus biopsy via GA yesterday. However, the pain in recovery was so bad! It's been 24 hours since I woke up, and without ibuprofen and my pxd cocodomol 30/500, I still have severe cramping. The bleeding isn't too bad, but my God, I don't know how anyone could have this procedure with just LA. This procedure should remain in an operating theatre under GA.

NCEPOD is looking for people to join their Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) group. Find out more information in the attachment below: Patient and Public Involvement_information pack.pdf

NCEPOD is looking for trainees to join their Healthcare Professionals in Training group. Further information can be found in the attachment below: Healthcare Professionals in Training_information pack.pdf

The GOSH Learning Academy has launched a new expert-led digital training series, designed to help witnesses of fact give clear, confident and credible evidence in court. These flexible, on-demand modules offer practical legal guidance and realistic insight into court proceedings, equipping NHS professionals with the knowledge and confidence to navigate the legal process effectively. Download flyer: GOSH Digital Witness Preparation Modules-External.pdf

When choosing a local pharmacy or chemist, people may consider different factors such as product availability, opening hours, location, and the overall convenience of the service. What factors do you usually consider when selecting a pharmacy for your everyday healthcare needs?

Endometriosis is a common gynecological condition in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus. It can cause significant pain and may affect daily activities, relationships, and fertility. One important concern is that severe period or pelvic pain can sometimes be considered “normal,” which may delay proper medical evaluation. Women experiencing persistent or worsening symptoms should feel comfortable discussing them with a healthcare professional. Symptoms that may need medical assessmentSome symptoms associated with endometriosis can include: Severe or worsening menstrual pain Chronic pelvic pain Pain during or after sexual intercourse Pain during bowel movements or urination, particularly around menstruation Heavy or irregular menstrual bleeding Difficulty becoming pregnant Persistent fatigue or symptoms that interfere with daily activities However, these symptoms can have several possible causes, so they should not automatically be assumed to indicate endometriosis. Why early assessment mattersThere is no single symptom that confirms endometriosis, and diagnosis can require a detailed medical history, physical examination, and appropriate investigations. A healthcare professional can help determine whether further evaluation is needed and discuss treatment options according to the individual's symptoms, fertility plans, and overall health. Patients should also be encouraged to describe how their pain affects their everyday life, rather than simply reporting that they have “painful periods.” Keeping a record of menstrual symptoms, pain severity, bleeding patterns, and other related symptoms can make conversations with healthcare professionals more productive. When to seek urgent careSevere or sudden pelvic pain, fainting, very heavy bleeding, fever, or other concerning symptoms should receive prompt medical attention, as these may have causes other than endometriosis that require urgent assessment. As healthcare professionals, we can contribute to safer women's healthcare by listening carefully to patients, taking persistent pain seriously, explaining diagnostic and treatment options clearly, and encouraging patients to seek further assessment when symptoms continue. I’m Dr. Tazeen Ashraf, a gynecologist, and I’m interested in contributing to discussions that improve awareness and patient-centered care for women's health conditions, including endometriosis.

Created by Professor Chris Hopkins Closes on 15 January 2027 Patient Group Directions are already used safely by nurses, pharmacists and allied health professionals. We want the Government to extend this framework to trained and statutory regulated clinical scientists and biomedical scientists, with suitable governance, training and competency frameworks. The Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) has already considered this issue. In 2023 it supported PGD use by clinical and biomedical scientists for diagnostic PGD's with appropriate training and oversight. Expanding this to therapeutic PGD's, could provide timely access to treatment, reduce delays and referrals, remove repeat visits, ease workforce pressures and improve patient outcomes. We therefore urge the Government to build on CHM’s findings and update the legal framework. Allow clinical and biomedical scientists to use patient group directions. - Petition

Last week this was published and I am interested in what the broader community thinks of it. I already have a feel what @Clive Flashman thinks but what about the rest of you? https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/medical-device-regulation-for-ambient-voice-technology-products/ It certainly felt to me that the initial reaction was a widening of the gap between the concerned and the enthusiastic rather than the fabled and politically much loved "coming together" So.....help or hindrance and what are thoughts with respect to the timing in relation to NHS policy versus the pending outcome of https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/national-commission-into-the-regulation-of-ai-in-healthcare?

Have you or a loved one: felt better after a medication was stopped? experienced side effects from medicines that continued after a hospital stay? struggled with taking lots of medicines? wondered whether all your medicines were still necessary? If so, the CHARMER programme team would like to hear from you. Find out more on the poster below or on their website: Patient Stories - CHARMER Study

Reading these experiences, one thing really stands out: people often aren’t upset just because a treatment didn’t go to plan, they’re upset because they felt dismissed when they raised concerns afterwards. Whether treatment is through the NHS or privately, patients deserve clear explanations about the expected benefits, possible risks, and what the plan is if something doesn’t feel right. A second opinion can make a huge difference, especially if your bite feels different, you develop jaw pain, or your symptoms are being brushed aside. A practice that takes the time to explain options without pressure can help you make informed decisions rather than feeling rushed into more treatment. That’s one reason that some dental practices emphasise discussing treatment choices, long-term oral health and maintaining ongoing patient relationships instead of rushing appointments. No dental or orthodontic treatment can guarantee a perfect outcome, but good communication, proper follow-up and taking a patient's concerns seriously should never be optional. Everyone deserves to be heard, particularly when new symptoms appear during or after treatment.

@Tauqirashraf Based on scope and longevity....probably the diagnostic service digital platforms. Laboratory and imaging systems (PACS) have given all clinicians (with appropriate rights) access to far more diagnostic information including the primary data, not just reports. They have been around for decades and unlike primary care systems which are even older are a fairly generic and consistent service across settings. All digital systems introduce (often new) risks but hopefully are at worst risk neutral...impossible to truly quantity but there are incontrovertible benefits to digitisation in terms of access, efficiency and secondary uses even if they are far from perfect even for those functions! As or the last 2 questions.....there may well be strategies that answer your question but the fundamental deficit is in the foundations of digital systems which are not truly fit for purposes and require workaround upon workaround to deliver the reasonable functions of today and proposed functions of tomorrow. The future is always the day after and isn't on the agenda if that isn't too cryptic!

A request for compensation or even the prospect of litigation should not automatically bring the complaints process to a halt. In many cases, the complaint investigation serves a different purpose to legal proceedings by identifying what happened, addressing any failings and demonstrating openness. Keeping those processes separate, while ensuring the investigation does not prejudice any legal case, is often the most balanced approach. It can also help reassure boards that continuing a fair and well-documented complaints investigation is about good governance and organisational learning, not admitting liability. Ultimately, a thorough complaints process can benefit both the organisation and the person raising the concerns, regardless of whether legal proceedings follow.

This is an important area of research. From our experience at Serene Soul Care, providing home carer services, we often see how timely assessment and appropriate referral can make a significant difference for people, particularly older adults receiving care at home. With initiatives like Pharmacy First, there's a growing need for accurate point-of-care UTI diagnostics that support faster decision-making and appropriate antibiotic prescribing. I'm also interested in evidence around patient experiences, costs, and current care pathways in community pharmacies and primary care. If anyone can recommend recent studies or real-world data on this topic, I'd be grateful.

The Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF) would like to better understand the landscape of Human Factors/Ergonomics (HF/E) in healthcare in the UK. Our aim is to support better use of, and integration of, HF/E into the healthcare environment. In order to do this, they want to understand the current picture - how many people work in an HF/E related job? How many work in NHS trusts/private hospitals? What sort of roles do they do? Etc. Please complete this survey. It should only take a maximum of 5 minutes to complete. Human Factors & Ergonomics In Healthcare - UK ONLY survey Please feel free to share this with anyone who you think might be relevant. This includes health and safety and manual handling roles. Responses are anonymous and CIEHF will not collect your personal data. Thank you, The CIEHF Team Deadline: 12th July 2026

Thanks @Jules I've used AI to summarise this. Will watch the full presnetation too! “Can improvement and innovation save the NHS?” by Professor Mary Dixon-Woods Below is an AI generated concise summary report of the video “Can improvement and innovation save the NHS?”, a keynote by Professor Mary Dixon-Woods published by THIS Institute in May 2026. The lecture argues that improvement and innovation can help the NHS, but only when they are evidence-based, realistically implemented, attentive to inequality, and supported by well-functioning organisations rather than treated as universal solutions in themselves.[1][2] Executive summary The lecture presents a sober assessment of current NHS performance across access, timeliness, quality, effectiveness, and equity, using examples such as elective delays, cancer treatment delays, unwarranted variation in diabetes and breast cancer care, and persistent inequities in maternity outcomes. Professor Dixon-Woods argues that these problems are not simply deficits of effort or goodwill, but symptoms of deeper organisational, policy, and system design failures that limit the impact of improvement work.[2] Her central message is that innovation and improvement are necessary but insufficient unless they are grounded in evidence, matched to context, and protected from hype, overclaiming, and poorly designed large-scale programmes. She cautions that the NHS has often adopted interventions with excessive optimism, weak evaluation, and inadequate attention to implementation, creating cycles of enthusiasm followed by disappointment.[2] Main arguments The lecture identifies several core challenges facing the NHS: care is not consistently accessible, timely, high quality, effective, or equitable, and these deficits vary substantially by geography, deprivation, ethnicity, and sex. Examples cited include falling public satisfaction, persistent elective backlogs, non-compliance with guidance in some diagnostic testing, and marked disparities in maternal mortality and severe morbidity.[2] A major theme is that variation should not be dismissed as inevitable background noise, because it often indicates remediable organisational weakness, uneven capability, or failure to apply existing knowledge reliably. The lecture also highlights the continued use of some low-value activity alongside failures to deliver proven beneficial care, showing that both underuse and overuse coexist in the NHS.[2] Improvement lessons Professor Dixon-Woods argues that improvement succeeds least when it is treated as a slogan, a centrally imposed programme, or an assumption that any change is inherently beneficial. She emphasizes that large-scale initiatives often fail when they are oversold, under-specified, weakly evaluated, and inattentive to frontline realities, staffing pressures, and competing operational demands.[2] The lecture supports a more disciplined model of improvement: test interventions properly, understand mechanisms, use robust evidence, and distinguish genuinely effective innovation from attractive but weakly evidenced ideas. In practice, this means improvement should be designed as serious applied inquiry rather than as advocacy, branding, or policy theatre.[2] Governance implications For board and governance audiences, the lecture implies that oversight should focus not only on performance outcomes but on the organisational conditions that make safe and effective improvement possible. These conditions include the ability to identify risk early, hear uncomfortable information, respond to variation, evaluate change honestly, and sustain attention on inequity as well as aggregate performance.[2] The talk is particularly relevant to patient safety governance because it links poor outcomes to structural and cultural issues rather than isolated individual failings. It therefore supports governance approaches that emphasise system surveillance, speaking up, learning capability, and critical scrutiny of improvement claims before scale-up.[2] Actions for leaders A practical reading of the lecture suggests five priorities for NHS leaders and boards: · Treat major improvement claims as propositions requiring evidence, not as self-validating solutions.[2] · Target unwarranted variation as a governance signal of uneven quality and possible safety risk.[2] · Examine inequity explicitly, especially where deprivation, ethnicity, sex, or geography are linked to worse outcomes.[2] · Avoid adopting innovations at scale without credible implementation planning and evaluation.[2] · Strengthen organisational conditions for learning, challenge, and candour so that weak signals are detected earlier.[2] An example of the lecture’s practical relevance is its treatment of maternity inequity: disparities in mortality and morbidity are presented not as unfortunate externalities but as evidence that service design and care delivery are failing some groups more than others. That framing is directly applicable to board assurance, quality committees, and patient safety improvement programmes.[2] Would you like this converted into a more formal board paper style with headings such as background, key issues, implications, and recommendations? 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_iCWIazGtU 2. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/15930243?hl=en-GB

thank you Urmila, so please that I'm not an outlier when one looks at the evidence - there is no clear guidance - but we should be doing all we can - as you allude to

We, I mean a great F2, is looking into this as we have had an incident where the LMWH was held preop and the patient had an iliofemoral DVT. There is quite a b it of data showing that LMWH can be given same day pre surgery and certainly within 12 hours - time frame seems to be 2-24 hours!! I asked co-pilot for some help - I've also asked for references - and have updated this attachement PLEASE BE AWARE THIS IS AI GENERATED - but some good food for thought and a starter for 10 Katie has done a great formal literature search and when she has finished - she is happy to share - and then we can write some advice in our VTE prevention policy!! co-pilot search for preop LMWH.pdf

I had the Kyleena coil fitted which was slightly smaller than the Mirena. I was told it would feel like 3 period cramps when being fitted. I had a local anaesthetic gel to help with the pain of the clamp but I still felt it. I was crying because I was so anxious and worked up and I hadn’t expected it. The nurse said ‘did you not bring anyone with you?’, and luckily my boyfriend had come with me, only because I was extremely anxious. Had I not been anxious, as I am not usually, or had he have been at work, I would’ve just gone by myself. Throughout, I was taking deep breaths but the pain took my breath away, I was crying the entire time and was yelling out in pain or holding my breath. I was sweating and writhing in pain, I was really struggling to stay still and I am usually not bothered by medical procedures. I also felt extremely sick and dizzy afterwards. I got told cramping would last for a few hours to a day… two weeks later I still have cramps. There is absolutely no way I could’ve driven myself home! I had to ride home with the window open with a bag in my hands, hunched over. I got home and the pain eventually made me sick. I was dosing up on paracetamol and ibuprofen, then I tried feminax, and I was using two hot water bottles at a time and none of it made a difference. I feel absolutely traumatised and I still feel sick when thinking about the pain 2 weeks on. I can’t bring myself to check the strings are in the right place because I’m still having cramps and don’t want to do anything to make it worse. I’m terrified to get it replaced in 5 years!

The national survey of patient safety partners is now live Researchers from THIS Institute are inviting patient safety partners across the NHS to take part in a new survey exploring how the role is developing. This national survey will help them understand: Who is taking on the role What patient safety partners do in practice How the role is evolving and how it can be supported Your contribution will play an important part in building evidence to support patient safety roles nationally. The survey closes on 15 June 2026. 👉 Take part here: https://www.thiscovery.org/project/patient-safety-partner-t2