Comments for The Cumberland Initiative

Comment on The challenge of healthcare communication and patient empowerment by Building a healthier and wealthier UK « The Cumberland Initiative

Building a healthier and wealthier UK « The Cumberland Initiative — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 11:27:55 +0000

[…] At a two-day event in Salford University on May 30-31, CI explored the relationship between healthcare development, economic growth and personal welfare, including insights from IBM and BT strategists and a leading GP. […]

Comment on Festival of Evidence by Festival of Evidence, 20-24 October 2014 | UK Chapter of the System Dynamics Society

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 14:54:16 +0000

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Comment on Festival of Evidence by Health and Wellbeing Challenge | Cumberland Initiative – Festival of Evidence – 20-24 October 2014

Fri, 29 Aug 2014 07:58:23 +0000

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Comment on Festival of Evidence by Harry Longman

Harry Longman — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 22:44:31 +0000

I met Terry Young at the HSJ Innovation Summit where he was inviting people to submit evidence. We have a number of new classes of evidence:
Operational data extracted from GP clinical systems which show for example demand patterns by month/week/day/hour, waiting times and response times, consultation durations, demographics and continuity.
Real time online data capture from receptionists and clinicians during consultations, showing what happened and how the call was resolved
Patient survey data gathered same day from patients who have used the service, showing the link between speed of response, choice of doctor and patient satisfaction.

All this evidence is to understand general practices as a system.
Analysed and presented, is this the kind of thing which is of interest?

Comment on Contribution of a National Centre to the Academic Health Science Networks by Ginny

Ginny — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:25:44 +0000

hello, I was trying to access this document in relation to AHSNs but the zipped file doesn’t have any content in it. If you could send me the doc in PDF or Word form it would be greatly appreciated,Ginny

Comment on 3 key questions for the Cumberland Initiative by Nathan Proudlove

Nathan Proudlove — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 12:22:13 +0000

I presume the reason that these hypotheses appear so negative is the epistemological approach adopted…

They are null hypotheses that the researchers are trying to refute! It’s the old “all swans are white” approach taught in much (social science) statistical research methods. This might be justified if these null propositions are very firmly and widely held so that refutation is very obvious (one finds a black swan) and shifts the old paradigm, but it is often misused as a straw man or ‘nil’ hypothesis. Therefore it would indeed be crucial to know whether these hypotheses were directly derived from the beliefs of Sir Richard and his colleagues – one could imagine they were…

A reappraisal of how (‘hard’) science is actually done (and how statistics should be used in its support) suggests that generally one should instead start with the researcher’s theory and its (positive) predictions as the null and so: if empirical investigations refute it then that stimulates another cycle of building (better) theory, if they fail to refute it then we go through further cycles of testing to build its credibility.

This is the way ‘improvement science’ works : e.g. the PDCA/PDSA testing and learning cycle; and the way a doctor treats a patient…?

Comment on The challenge of healthcare communication and patient empowerment by Cumberland Initiative

Cumberland Initiative — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 23:16:14 +0000

Comment on 3 key questions for the Cumberland Initiative by David Hughes

David Hughes — Wed, 23 May 2012 12:02:33 +0000

It was not clear to me whether the ‘rationale’ reflects Sir Richard’s view directly but in any event the set of rationales strike me as extraordinarily negative and a disappointing way to start the project. It is also surprising that the starting point for the first two questions (namely that the variation makes each patient a special case – so there are no economies of scale or organisation.) fails to recognise even the most basic ideas of ‘mass customisation’ in engineering. As a simple example, take a look at Royal mail ‘Smilers’ offering. Upload a digital photo of family, pets etc and they will make you a book of legal tender stamps incorporating that photo. Each order will be different and personalised yet Royal mail can achieve mass production economies of scale. My suggestion would be to turn your hypotheses into positives rather than negatives.