How We Pay Attention

How should we pay for the NHS?

The question of how much we should spend on the NHS, and by what means, seems to have reached new urgency. Over the past week the BBC’s NHS Health Check series of special reports has given graphic form to a rising tide of concern, as waiting lists lengthen, increasingly sick and elderly patients queue inside and outside emergency departments, and overburdened doctors and nurses speak openly abo...

How Should We Pay for Health Care?

Epigenetics in comparative biology: why we should pay attention.

The past decade has seen an explosion of articles in scientific journals involving non-genetic influences on phenotype through modulation of gene function without changes in gene sequence. The excitement in modern molecular biology surrounding the impact exerted by the environment on development of the phenotype is focused largely on mechanism and has not incorporated questions asked (and answe...

Cognitive stimulation in ICU patients: should we pay more attention?

ICUs have raised survival rates, but they have highlighted the need to reduce the morbidity of ICU patients and improve their short-and long-term functional outcomes. Frequently these patients, especially with acute respiratory distress syndrome, present neuro-cognitive impairments [1] that extend beyond their acute phase and hospital stay and lead to signifi cant defi cits in quality of life [...

We must pay more attention to record linkage quality.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0102-311XED010715 Record linkage techniques enable researchers to identify and merge data regarding a single individual stored in different databases 1. There are many possibilities for applying these techniques in health research, surveillance and evaluation. This has led to an increasing interest in their use. Following an international trend, we have observed a grow...