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Anthony Cope's avatar

Great to see you, yesterday, and I was happy to take The Parky Petition forward one name.

Anyway, you’re absolutely right about getting the REAL story about Health Data, and Health Science in general, out there. The old saying goes: “Bad news has won the race before Good news has put its running shoes on” and as a journalist you know ow how true that is. I think it’s also a matter of language. When I was working in science, I never really spoke about my work, even in general terms, because nobody knew what I was talking about. It wasn’t a matter of me talking in Science Speak but people just ‘switch-off’ when the word ‘science’, especially ‘Biomedical Science’ is mentioned. We need to find a way for ‘Biomedical science’ to connect with ‘normal life’. Everyone likes their mobile phone and sees the benefit of ‘that sort of science’ but they don’t find saving their liver or even their own children ‘sexy’ because that’s ‘the boring sort of science’. That’s definitely Weird Science, isn’t it?!?

So, what to do?? Well, you keep doing your thing and I’ll keep doing mine. I’m educating (amongst a range of other things) the next generation of mental health practitioners at KCL to be more human and speak to their patients as human beings, plus to listen their whole story and not just the medical notes. It’ll make them better clinicians and make life better for the patients, plus get them to keep on track with their treatment(s). Compliance is easier when you’re doing it for someone you like.

We’re all stories in the end. Let’s put the good ones in a Rolls-Royce, so they can wave at the bad ones as they pass them on the way to that Finish Line…………

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Greg's avatar

The one thing which is missing, and preventing data sharing, is patient consent.

If only the NHS put as much effort into obtaining consent as it does in trying to do things without consent, we'd have at least a decade's worth of data by now.

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