It’s estimated that one in four adults will experience a mental health problem in any given year. Despite this, there remains a stigma attached to opening up and speaking about our mental wellbeing.
Today, we’re marking Time to Talk Day, encouraging us all to have a conversation about how we’re feeling. We asked four experts at IGHI about their experiences, insights and advice on speaking up about mental health.
Cancer survival is improving and today, half of people diagnosed will survive their disease. This is thanks to research. Research that’s guiding governments to change their policies, underpinning awareness campaigns and educational initiatives, turning discoveries into treatments and prevention measures.
But there’s still much to be done to help more people survive, by catching the disease earlier and developing better treatments.
This World Cancer Day, and as part of our celebrations to mark IGHI’s 10th anniversary this year, find out how our researchers are working to make that happen. Join us in exploring some of our projects that could lead to better detection, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
‘Big Data’ has become a bit of a buzzword. But for us at the Big Data and Analytical Unit, it’s our bread and butter.
The Big Data and Analytical Unit (BDAU) is the health data hub in IGHI’s Centre for Health Policy. We’re a multidisciplinary team that collaborates with clinicians, academics and data scientists across the College (and beyond!) to support improvements in health through better use of data. But what exactly does that mean?
Here’s a typical day for the BDAU to show you what that looks like in practice.
People complain for a variety of reasons. But international evidence consistently finds that most people complain to prevent incidents from happening to others – they want to see change as a result, when they feel something isn’t right. Making a complaint can therefore be an empowering process, if people know – or feel – that their actions could make a difference.
Dealing with complaints is an important learning process for those that the complaint is directed against, but also the institution more widely. They can highlight problems that may have otherwise slipped through the net, prompting action that can prevent the same mistakes happening again and affecting more people.
Taking medicines is the most common way that we attempt to stave off or treat illness. Every day people all across the world use medicines to help improve their health and wellbeing. They’ve transformed the treatment and outlook for many diseases, helping people live longer and healthier lives. Yet medicines are also a major risk to patients’ safety. And this risk is not only a result of drugs’ side effects.
Mistakes in the treatment process can also lead to patient harm. Errors can happen at any stage of the pathway; when professionals prescribe, dispense and administer drugs. In England alone, it’s estimated that over 230 million such errors occur every year, causing hundreds of deaths and contributing to thousands more.
By Pip Batey, Design Strategist, Helix Centre, IGHI
I have always cared about social causes, particularly within mental health and environmental-related issues. I enjoy making sense of complex problems and taking concrete steps to improve systems that can have a lasting positive impact. Both of these elements are a core part of Helix’s ethos and ways of working.
This week we’re opening applications for IGHI’s annual Student Challenges Competition. We’re inviting aspiring global health innovators to submit their project in a bid to win £10,000.
To help budding student innovators get started, IGHI Visiting Professor and former BMJ editor Dr Richard Smith reveals his most essential pieces of advice.
With a new year comes new goals.
Our staff have been reflecting on the changes and progress they want to see over the coming year. So as we settle into 2020, we asked some key people across IGHI about the developments they’d like to see in healthcare.
Our National Health Service owns some of the most comprehensive patient data sets across the globe. This makes these data a very valuable asset – not just as a springboard for improving health and care through learning from the data, but also in terms of the potential for financial return. It is critical that if the NHS shares this data with companies, in an appropriate and secure way, it also receives a fair share of this financial return.
These are arguments we make in a new article published in Lancet Digital Health.
Every Christmas, researchers from IGHI’s Hamlyn Centre gather to show off their latest innovations in robotics and healthcare technology.
We caught up with some of the team to find out more about their research, and how they hope it could make a difference to people’s lives.