NEW Podcast Out - My chat with legendary BBC foreign correspondent & film maker, Martin Sixsmith. Found lots in common - living behind Iron Curtain, US @commonwealthfund.org fellowship, working in government, storytelling & making sense of a divided world harknessfellows.org.uk/podcasts/luk...

Great meeting staff on the wards and in theatres today & talking sustainability. We’ve spoken to 450 staff across UCLH this month about improving hand hygiene and reducing glove use. Better for patients, better for the planet and saves money too.

Visited Hospital de Sant Pau. Breathtaking art nouveau hospital in Barcelona. Incredible and window into 1920s medicine and earliest net zero hospital, powered on geothermal from 400 wells each 100 deep. Wow

On a 285 km/hr train to Barcelona for a health conference where am speaking about innovation and also climate action. Wonderful experience, comfy, fast WIFI, good catering. So much nicer than flying! Just over £46 each way. So much cheaper than UK trains too!

Great to speak at #KFAnnual Conf on climate & our work @uclh. Serious stuff but there is hope, as we have the solutions. Good climate strategy does not run against finance, tech or quality, but harnesses them. The NHS can lead the world in this & build green economic growth @thekingsfund.bsky.social

CAR-T cell therapy is one of the biggest breakthrough cancer treatments in recent years. Proud that @uclh is trialing its use for multiple sclerosis for the first time. Extraordinary science and fascinating development for autoimmune conditions gbr01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Exhausted but elated after incredible week rethinking clinic letters for the modern era. Brought GPs, @uclh staff, patients together for a huge push. The time, safety challenges, cost & impact on GP & hospital staff is vast. Got down to 9 key solutions, 1 worked up prototype & we’re done ✔️

Excited to start our clinic letter sprint today with patients, GPs, @uclh clinicians, techies and administrators. Letters have a massive role, safety critical, hugely expensive and time consuming. Major challenges outlined today, so looking forward to what we can do about it

The delicate parasol of the Pleated Inkcap. This fragile fungi lives for only 24 hours. Nature is amazing. Let's protect it

On wards today at uclh - remarkable clinical skills & v complex patients. ⬆️ role for generalists - Ward round strategy key, but not standardised - many reasons for discharge delays - disposable curtains are v hard to draw - scrubs pockets are too small &📱falls out

Stunning news from UCLH on this incredible Huntington’s disease breakthrough. Nice to see some evidence based positive medical news! www.uclh.nhs.uk/news/hunting...

Rain and shine in Paddington

Watching a merganser fishing in France. Nature is incredible. Let's protect it.

Important to spread hope. People are now putting up a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels, the rough equivalent of the power generated by one coal-fired plant, every fifteen hours… www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...

The rise of YouTube shorts in the last year is mind blowing. Up to 200 billion daily views or over 1 billion hrs a day. In a world of 8 bn people! Will any productivity gains from AI simply be offset by increasingly effective tech distractions? www.thewrap.com/youtube-shor...

Great #FestivalofExcellence hearing superb improvement work UCLH. I talked about quality, & why spending more ≠ better outcomes. Gave 3 case studies which show drive quality ⬆️ then cost ⬇️ (hip surgery, gloves off, clinic letters). Complexity the enemy of reliability & quality

Person centred care at it's best! Uclh team working across services to enable one of our young, severely needle phobic patients to get the vaccinations needed to visit his family abroad for the first time. (Spoiler alert: solution was to vax when under general for his dental work) buff.ly/pFxkkcj

BIG STORY which brings hope! China's emissions are dropping for the first time! This really matters as China has more than a third of global emissions. Wow. www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-cle... Climate action on a massive scale

It’s quite incredible what UCLH staff do for our patients. Take outpatients, where last year we did over 1.4m appointments up about 100k on the year before. Some weeks we saw 30,000 patients. The NHS is under huge pressure but the work of our staff is just remarkable

Great to have the Chinese Health Minister come to see first-hand what we are doing at UCLH on sustainability. The Chinese Government is responsible for the largest hospital sector in the world, so discussing net zero is important. Minister was full of praise for our staff’s work

Oxford sparkling tonight

Sat in on a superb UCLH ENT clinic today trialing ambient AI to write notes/letters - patients & clinicians happy - shifts doc from writer to proof reader - saves time but justifies £? - incredibly complex case worked well - no idea why send letters every time, even if AI helps

Loved speaking on electronic health records, including on critical need to focus on adoption, that digitisation in itself does not guarantee transformation and the implications of hardwiring EHRs into so much of what we do. Great debate.

Brilliant discussion with colleagues from @ouhospitals.bsky.social @cuhnhs.bsky.social @microsoft.com and @lukeoshea.bsky.social and @nellthornton.bsky.social about the role of AI in delivering improved healthcare, including the trade-offs we need to discuss with the public #Shelford2025

As the most destructive wildfires in US history rage, the climate stats have dropped 2024 was the hottest year on record, the first above 1.5C We may be the only civilised life anywhere in the universe Time is running out Millions of us need to act Thank you if you are

Over 200,000 trees planted since we switched to Ecosia as our default search engine at uclh! Plants a tree for every 45 searches & is carbon negative. Easy to do, great search algorithm & climate friendly. Who else will follow?

Visited Toyota factory & 🤯 - 🚗 every 1-2 mins - drive quality ⬆️ waste/cost ⬇️ - Mgmt system crystal clear (planning to delivery). Qual control every step - STANDARDISE EVERYTHING incl. jobs & work processes. Staff follow to letter - relentless improvement by workers & reward

We win Nobel Prizes for AI in the UK. It has jaw dropping capabilities in health. We have burgeoning patient need. So why is the NHS seemingly impenetrable to AI’s advances? My HSJ article here hsj.cdn.wilmingtonplc.com/2024/10/23/h...

Hancock’s up this week at the Inquiry. I keep thinking about a guy who died on the wards. Caught Covid the day before restrictions came in. Delay cost lives. But the lessons are wider. And the parallels with the climate crisis are striking www.hsj.co.uk/delay-cost-l...

My new HSJ article is just out. “Delay cost lives during the pandemic, let's not repeat that mistake with climate change” Reflecting on the Covid Inquiry, the parallels with Climate are striking www.hsj.co.uk/delay-cost-l...

Over 100,000 trees planted since we switched to Ecosia as our default search engine at UCLH!Plants a tree for every 45 searches & is carbon negative. Easy to do, great search algorithm & climate friendly. Which other trusts else will follow?

#CovidInquiry rightly charting the awful failure to act decisively, despite what we saw in our hospitals & the obvious path of the virus. Recent global temperatures have been extraordinary, with records set every month & by large margins The time to act is now #ClimateCrisis

Isn't nature amazing

Impressed by MS CEO, Satya Nadella’s vision around the bottom up democratisation of AI & taking the time to talk to us in the NHS about our challenges. He parallels AI impact and risks with the Industrial Revolution, which is fair, but the exponential speed of change makes this different