Didn’t Lansley reforms put an end to naive political interference?

Despite his enthusiasm, I’m not convinced Matt Hancock, Secretary for Health and Social Care, (see BMJ news analysis), fully understands the history of digitalisation of the NHS (see previous post). He needs to put computerisation in perspective and recognise there are genuine problems. I summarised these in a previous post, 

The essence of the problems is poor usability; taking too much time; interference with face-to-face patient contact; and degradation of clinical documentation.

I’m not disputing the need to give an impetus to IT in the NHS, but this does need to be focused on improving clinician satisfaction rather than making work in the NHS more difficult. Otherwise we’re just going to go through another wasteful phase of computer consultants ripping off the NHS.

How will the film Cold War go down in Poland?

The brilliance of Pawel Palinowski’s latest film, Cold War, as with his previous film Ida, is partly because of the way he blends political allegory about the state of Poland into a glorious film. As far as the film is concerned, Poland comes to an end in the Cold War and the only hope is a young child left behind. I look forward to seeing Palinowski take forward his themes about Poland into the more recent era.

Nothing left in the tank

Alaister Cook is leaving the England team to find others to depend on (see his resignation statement). He started test cricket at a young age (see Guardian report). But England came to depend on him too much (see previous post). At least Sam Curran and Moeen Ali prevented Joe Root suffering the same responsibilities as captain in the last test, although hopefully he will be able to bat at four, where he wants to bat. I'd put Bairstow at three, not Ali. Still, I look forward to last India test this summer at Oval, as I have tickets for third and fourth day. I hope Alaister Cook leaves on a high.