Dr Keith McNeil, who led the team that carried out Australia’s first heart-lung-liver transplant, will take up his new role of Chief Executive of Cambridge University Hospitals early in the New Year. After 20 years working as a specialist physician in Australia and England, Dr McNeil started his chief executive career in 2007 at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, a 980 bed tertiary teaching hospital, and one of the largest teaching hospitals in the Southern Hemisphere. He is now chief executive of Metro North Hospital Service in Brisbane, one of the largest health services in Australia.

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Improving health and care: the role of the outcomes frameworks

‘Improving health and care: the role of the outcomes frameworks’ sets out how the 3 outcomes frameworks, Adult Social Care, the NHS and Public Health, work together to achieve the desired outcomes for the health and care system.

The ‘Improving health and care: the role of the outcomes frameworks’ document explains the principles behind the outcomes frameworks, including:

• how they support quality improvement for individuals
• demonstrates how the 3 frameworks are aligned
• the role of shared and complementary indicators
• sets out how they will work together in practice to help the system address the challenges facing the health and care system

The NHS confederation have published a one page guide here.

Read more on the Department of Health website

AHSN Forum is a partnership of the NHS Confederation, Universities UK, the Young Foundation, ABPI and ABHI to create a national platform for the regional Networks. The Forum believes that AHSNs are a major opportunity to transform health care and drive economic growth. They should be given every chance to achieve this potential.

For more information see the AHSN forum e-alert or see the website.

September 2012

“Much clinical decision-making remains insufficiently informed by reliable evidence, and much research is not methodologically robust. Some treatments actually harm patients, while other, worthwhile, treatments are not used widely enough. The Forward Look, Implementation of Medical Research in Clinical Practice, prepared by the European Medical Research Councils  (EMRC) addressed the question: ‘How can the treatment of patients be improved through better research and better use of research results?’ The issues  were thoroughly discussed and debated by more than 90 participants from around Europe and the rest of the world, culminating in a consensus conference. The resulting Forward Look has received widespread coverage and support in a range of media across Europe.

Click image above to download a copy of Forward Look

The aim of this Science Policy Briefing is to encapsulate the main conclusions and recommendations of the Forward Look, Implementation of Medical Research in Clinical Practice and to ensure further   dissemination. It identifies the stakeholder groups responsible for implementing the recommendations, and describes the steps needed to ensure that the recommendations are implemented for the benefit of the citizens of Europe.”

The NIHR have produced the leaflet “Funding Opportunities for research and career development“, which gives details of all the NIHR’s Research Programmes and Training and Career Development Programmes and how to apply.

Open access publishing has the potential to revolutionise the way in which biomedical scientists publish and access the latest results in their field.

There are opportunities to accelerate the use of open access but there are also hurdles to its widespread uptake. In recognition of the importance of open access to the biomedical sciences, the European Medical Research Councils (EMRC) of the European Science Foundation (ESF) launched an activity to investigate what, if any, steps EMRC could usefully take to improve the open access landscape in the biomedical field across Europe. Read the full report.