Ola Howell

Welcome to COPD UK - a UK conference for COPD healthcare professionals & researchers.

COPD UK 2026 will take place between the 1st & 2nd June 2026 at the Spine RCP building, Liverpool.

This years conference theme is:

“COPD a modifiable disease”

Conference information: www.copd-uk.com/home

The first thing Yaxley-Lennon did on leaving court was to thank Elon Musk for funding his legal costs.

That's Elon Musk who has repeatedly called for civil war in the UK.

As of typing this - all of the major politicians and platforms maintain a presence on X and it is time for them all to leave.

This week's @nature.com cover highlights a report of A.I.- mediated distortion
When #ChatGPT was asked to rate 40,000 résumés, it ranked the older male candidates as better quality than the younger female applicants nature.com/articles/s41...

UK university halted human rights research after pressure from China Exclusive: Leading professor at Sheffield Hallam was told to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in China after demands from authorities

„The university told her that a combination of administrative issues meant they could no longer support her work. But further inquiries suggested the university was “explicitly trading my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market,””

Do you work in #policy at local, regional, national government level? Fancy spending some time with like-minded researchers at @ox.ac.uk on the burning issues of the day?

Consider our new Visiting Fellowship scheme just open this week:
www.ox.ac.uk/research/usi...

🧠Great insights from Prof Julian Redhead on building NHS resilience for the winter ahead - highlighting the power of collaboration, innovation & system change.💬

#CARRiiASM #NHSResilience #WinterPressures #CARRii

@oxprimarycare.bsky.social

Why Do Doctors hate Checklists? The real culture war in healthcare

Funny

Calling ALL health data folk: Re UK Health Data Research Service.

The UK gov & Wellcome have pledged up to £600 million to create a HDRS.

Myself & an ace team have been tasked by Wellcome to assess the existing health data ecosystem & identify what is needed to support the HDRS 👇.

Get in touch

For those who bash the NHS, note that British diabetics pay £0 insulin

Patients with diabetes are eligible for a medical exemption certificate (FP92A), which covers all prescriptions related to their condition. This includes insulin, needles, testing strips, and other diabetes-related medications

It costs ~$70 to produce a year’s supply of insulin.

Yet, the average annual cost of insulin went from $2,864 in 2012 to $5,705 in 2016 to $18,000 in 2025. A 25,714% markup. That isn’t inflation or supply chain—It’s corporate greed.

Now—California will sell insulin for $11. Make this nationwide!

Happy World Pharmacist Day 💊

An absolute goldmine of health and mortality data 📊

Well done to all involved in this.

Is a lack of protected learning time holding back hospital pharmacists’ career development? “Protected learning time is essential for pharmacists to keep their skills up to date and deliver the best care for patients,” says Claire Anderson, president of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society…

Analysis of exclusive data by #ThePJ has revealed that one in four #NHS trusts and health boards does not offer protected time as part of job plans for pharmacists.

Here, #SophieWillis investigates whether or not trusts are preventing pharmacists from progressing in their careers

UK doctors guilty of sexual misconduct are not being struck off, research finds Analysis reveals 24% of guilty doctors handed suspensions but are allowed to keep working in medicine

Of 46 proven cases of sexual misconduct from one year (Aug ‘23-Aug ‘24):

ALL perpetrators were male doctors and over 80% held a position of authority.

Another example from 2025: 12-month practice suspension for proven rape because it was deemed a “one-off event”.

Is this for real?! 🤯

Why science needs outsiders - Works in Progress Magazine Science has forgotten that the greatest breakthroughs often come from outsiders who are able to take a fresh perspective.

Fun article about “outsider” scientists and their breakthroughs.

“Academia filters most funding, publishing, and hiring decisions through senior insiders, which favors ideas within existing paradigms.”

worksinprogress.co/issue/why-sc...

Dawn of A New Era of Primary Prevention in Medicine Recent groundbreaking reports highlight our newfound potential to prevent diseases

A groundbreaking paper published @nature.com today—the first large health language model—predicts >1,000 diseases for a person and when.
Implications here:
erictopol.substack.com/p/dawn-of-a-...

By creating an Account with Academia.edu, you grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license, permission, and consent for Academia.edu to use your Member Content and your personal information (including, but not limited to, your name, voice, signature, photograph, likeness, city, institutional affiliations, citations, mentions, publications, and areas of interest) in any manner, including for the purpose of advertising, selling, or soliciting the use or purchase of Academia.edu's Services.

I'm sorry, worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable permission to my voice and likeness? For what now? In any manner for any purpose???

This is in academia/.edu's new ToS, which you're prompted to agree to on login. Anyway I'll be jumping ship. You can find my stuff at hcommons.org.

The moment of a Russian UAV strike on Kharkiv today. The Russians hit the building of the National University of Pharmacy.

Come and join us at our 2025 Innovation day in Bristol! You can expect...
👑 Top class speakers
🥳 Networking opportunities
🖼️ Poster sessions
🛠️ Workshops
🍱 Lunch!!!
See our full speaker line up and book your free place now www.bath.ac.uk/events/south...

Can Ireland’s ‘Sláintecare’ be a model for community care in the UK? Irish government’s push to reduce hospital admissions drives down treatment waiting lists

Our new research published today sets out the valuable lessons we can learn from other countries' efforts to shift care from hospital to community.

@sjanereed.bsky.social spoke to @financialtimes.com about Ireland's reform plans. 👇

Excellent, insightful write up on the issues surrounding learning difficulties and ADHD diagnoses, and more. Thank you @bennewmark.bsky.social for sharing your experience and perspective. I very much enjoyed reading this and learned a lot.

And thanks @sarahjpharm.pharmsky.app for sharing the post💚

An ‘ultracrepidarian’ (19th century) is one who loves to give their opinion, at length, on matters they know nothing about.

Amazing woman and the co-founder of the University I graduated from 🤓

Doctors and drug developers who first saw scans from a new targeted form of radiotherapy were amazed. For some patients in the clinical trial, Novartis’ radioligand therapy had — in just six months — completely cleared cancer that had spread around their bodies. on.ft.com/462deTZ

The Americans moving to wartime Russia for ‘traditional values’ Moscow promotes visa scheme aimed at those disaffected by western society

Farewell 👋 and please PLEASE take your friends with you to this new milk and honey land 🫠

“…Russia’s “traditional values” were a natural draw for people, and a reason he chose to stay — as well as feeling freer in Russia to air his views.” 🤡

A very important caveat to the "AI stethoscope" that was completely ignored by many news outlets.

Yet a high false positive rate can make a screening tool more harmful than useful.

How can we encourage health journalists to be more critical of AI press releases?

Cc @mgtmccartney.bsky.social

*stares in academia*

Countries on track to eliminate cervical cancer:

-Australia by 2028
-Sweden by 2027
-Rwanda by 2030
-UK by 2040
-Indonesia by 2030
-Bhutan 2030
-El Salvador by 2030
-Canada by 2040

How? HPV vaccine. Same one RFK Jr is trying to ban.

You will note USA is not on this list.