By Joshua Symons, Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation’s Big Data Analytical Unit
Patient data is precious. It’s a resource that many researchers and clinicians use to improve healthcare and therefore the lives of patients and health professionals. That’s why we want to make sure it’s used in a way that’s both effective and safe. (more…)
By Nicolette Davies, IGHI’s Head of Operations
Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is a basic human right. The WHO’s Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom, continues to highlight the importance of UHC by focusing its World Health Day on this topic. Dr Tedros’ top priority is equity for health for all, but how will we achieve the World Health Assembly’s ambitious target of 1 billion more people benefiting from UHC within five years? (more…)
By Jonty Roland, IGHI Honorary Research Fellow and Independent Health Systems Consultant.
By dedicating this World Health Day to universal health coverage (UHC), the WHO is continuing to relentlessly bang the drum for ‘health for all’ under its charismatic Director-General. This is a beat that more and more countries are now marching to, with dozens of governments having announced UHC-inspired reforms since Dr Tedros took office two years ago. (more…)
By Dr Lisa Aufegger, IGHI Research Associate
Patient engagement has become a key priority in today’s health and care systems. And some have argued it’s essential for the sustainability of the NHS.
Patient engagement (PE), the involvement of patients in their medical process, is not a new concept. It first appeared in the late 80s, when the US Food and Drug Administration brought together patients, government, industry, and academia to identify and remove barriers to successful HIV drug and treatment development. Since then, PE activities have blossomed across clinical and non-clinical areas, and generated meaningful insight into and impact on quality improvement in healthcare service and delivery.
By Alex, Nick, Jonny and Calandra, IGHI’s Helix Centre.
The number of children with obesity has risen rapidly over the past 40 years.
According to data from the World Health Organization the number of overweight children increased 8-fold between 1975 and 2016, from 1% of children to 6% of girls and 8% of boys. In 2013 there were 42 million under-fives worldwide who were overweight or obese. And over a quarter of 2-15 year olds in England are estimated to be overweight or obese today. This poses a significant challenge to the safe and effective dosing of medications for children. (more…)
By Ana Luisa Neves, co-founder of momoby, GP and IGHI Research Fellow.
At momoby, we believe every woman should have access to prenatal care, regardless of where she lives. To tackle this challenge, we’re developing a low cost, pocket-sized device that tests for diseases that could harm pregnancy, using a single drop of blood. (more…)
By Dr Alex Thompson, Lecturer in sensing in cancer
World Cancer Day provides an opportunity both to celebrate the huge progress that has been made in the fight against cancer and to remember the challenges that lie ahead. While cancer survival has doubled in the UK over the last 40 years, the disease still causes more than one out of every four UK deaths. (more…)
By Nate Macabuag, 2018 winner of IGHI’s Student Challenges Competition.
Hey, I’m Nate, co-founder of Mitt, our prosthetic wearables start-up. We’re tackling the barriers that come with limb loss by building accessible, easy-to-use prosthetic limbs for people across the world. (more…)
It’s December, sweaters brandishing pompoms and sparkles are being obnoxiously paraded around offices, the scent of mulled wine and roasted chestnuts oozes from street corners, and that nostalgic Coca-Cola advert is back on television. These can only mean one thing: Christmas is just around the corner.
For many of us, this is an exciting and eagerly-awaited time of year that brings happiness, closeness and reconciliation. While for others, the festive season and the stresses and strains that accompany it is a recipe for mental ill health, and can exacerbate conditions such as anxiety and depression.
So as feelings and festivities grow, we can use this time as an opportunity to reflect, consider others and think about what needs to be done to improve mental wellbeing. Not just at Christmas, but to bring forward a brighter future for all people affected by mental illness.
To make a start, the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) spoke to one of our scientific advisors, Mr Hutan Ashrafian, who shared his thoughts and expertise on this complex subject.
“One of the main reasons is that loneliness becomes accentuated in people who are already lonely. Their feelings of loneliness become heightened for reasons such as the media coverage of togetherness and family time, people being happy, sharing presents. There’s a societal expectation that everyone will, by definition, be happy. It’s almost inflexible to people being sad or suffering from depression and loneliness.”
“It’s a heart-wrenching concept that we stigmatise the source of the biggest loss of “healthy” life years in our society – mental health. Recent reports have shown that the global burden of mental health is increasing, with around 4% of people affected by depression and 3.6% by anxiety. The worldwide cost is in the order of a trillion dollars, yet only around 1-6% of all healthcare spend is on mental health. So ultimately yes, it’s a persistent problem that’s stuck under the carpet, and one that we recently highlighted in our report on anxiety and depression from the World Innovation Summit for Health.
“At this event, the most decorated Olympian of all time, Michael Phelps, gave a talk where he discussed how despite his success, he experienced some very tough times of mental ill health and found it very hard to open up to people. This exemplifies that people from all professions, backgrounds and age groups can suffer from mental health problems, yet research shows that in many countries it’s still massively stigmatised.”
“We need to destigmatise and have an open society where people can freely talk. But to get mental health higher on the priority list, there needs to be a greater understanding of the fact that it is such a huge source of disability. Just because it affects the brain, that doesn’t make it any less real than any other diseases.
“In fact, many illnesses come hand in hand with mental health issues, which shows that mental health should get equal attention. So much of the money that’s being put towards certain diseases could also be packaged to cover the mental health problems that can accompany them.”
“Most of our day-to-day interactions happen at school or at work, so the onus is also on schools and industries to think about their environment so that pupils and staff are equipped to look out for one another. Sometimes colleagues know one another better than certain family members, so it’s something we shouldn’t take for granted.
“And support doesn’t need to be extreme; it could start with informal meetings such as chats with friends or colleagues, and then escalate if necessary to more formal counselling or psychiatric treatment. This is called stepped care, and it’s one major thing we highlighted in our WISH report.
“Another brilliant example is called task-sharing, which was made famous recently by Zimbabwe’s ‘friendship bench’ initiative. Trained elderly people would sit on benches and people could come and talk to them about their problems, and now the idea is opening up in schools where more experienced students and teachers are doing the same. Already there’s evidence that it’s having a positive effect.”
“If people are having problems with their mental health, or symptoms of mental illness, they should be able to just go and talk to someone about it, at any time. There would be no worry of implications, stigma or judgment.”
Mr Hutan Ashrafian is a Clinical Lecturer in Surgery and IGHI’s Chief Scientific Advisor.
By Dr Ana Luisa Neves, Research Fellow at the Imperial NIHR Patient Safety Translational Research Centre.
Over the last decade, incentives to adopt electronic health records have spread worldwide. Electronic health records offer many advantages, including an easier access to centralised health information by healthcare providers, patients and researchers, ultimately leading to a better coordination of patient care, greater efficiency, and better health outcomes. (more…)