Millions will be able to sign up for ‘life-changing' clinical trials through the NHS app
MILLIONS will be able to sign up for 'life-changing' clinical trials through the NHS app.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has vowed to speed up access to ground-breaking treatments by making medical research studies available to join via smartphone.
2
The move could slash trial set-up times from 250 days to 150 or fewer by next year.
Patients will receive push notifications from the app matching them to relevant studies based on their health data.
NHS Trusts will be ranked on trial performance.
Funding will be prioritised for the best.
The moves are part of Mr Streeting's Ten-Year Health Plan, due shortly.
He said: 'The app will become the digital front door to the NHS.
"It will enable us to play our part in developing the medicines of the future.'
Wes Streeting brutally slams Kemi AND Farage and demands Tories say sorry for how they ran the NHS in blistering attack
2
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
24 minutes ago
- The Independent
Hospital admissions up as new Covid variant spreads
A new Covid variant called Nimbus (NB.1.8.1) is spreading globally and is being monitored by the World Health Organisation (WHO). UK data shows Covid-related hospital admissions have risen by almost 10 per cent, with cases up by 6.9 per cent in early June. Dr Naveed Asif warns that the Nimbus variant has a distinctive symptom: a severe sore throat described as a "razor blade sensation". Other commonly reported symptoms include persistent fatigue, mild cough, fever, muscle aches, and nasal congestion, with some experiencing digestive issues. The WHO and UKHSA indicate that current vaccines are effective against the Nimbus variant, and there is no evidence suggesting it causes more severe illness than previous variants.
The Independent
25 minutes ago
- The Independent
Very painful symptom could be a warning sign of new Covid ‘Nimbus' variant
A new Covid variant spreading in the UK may be causing one 'very painful' symptom, a doctor has warned. The new Nimbus Covid strain (NB.1.8.1) is now rapidly spreading across the world and is being closely monitored by the World Health Organisation. Latest data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) revealed Covid-related hospital admissions have risen by almost 10 per cent, with 947 patients admitted in the week up to May 31. Cases have also risen by 6.9 per cent with 1,211 cases in the week up to June 4. Dr Naveed Asif, GP at The London General Practice, warned this variant has a distinctive symptom, a severe sore throat known as a 'razor blade sensation'. It causes a sharp stabbing pain when you swallow, often at the back of the throat. Rest, fluids and painkillers are the best remedies for the painful symptom. Doctor Mohamed Imran Lakhi, told The Mirror: 'People commonly report a severe sore throat, persistent fatigue, mild cough, fever, muscle aches, and nasal congestion. "Some also experience digestive issues like nausea or diarrhoea, which isn't always typical with Covid variants.' The NHS advises people who think they have Covid to stay at home. However, vaccines that are currently approved are also effective against this new variant, a World Health Organisation spokesperson said. "Despite a concurrent increase in cases and hospitalisations in some countries where NB.1.8.1 is widespread, current data does not indicate that this variant leads to more severe illness than other variants in circulation,' WHO said. Dr Gayatri Amirthalingam, one of the deputy directors at UKHSA said: 'You might have seen news or social media conversations about the Covid variant NB.1.8.1, which you might know as the 'Nimbus variant'. "NB.1.8.1 has been detected in small numbers in the UK to date, but international data suggests that it is growing as a proportion of all Covid cases. "Based on the available information so far however, there is no evidence to suggest that this variant causes more severe disease than previous variants, of that the vaccines in current use will be less effective against it.' If your symptoms persist or get worse, or if you are worried about you or someone else you can speak to a GP or call 111. If someone is in serious distress, for example struggling to breathe, you should call 999.
The Guardian
26 minutes ago
- The Guardian
The Genius Myth by Helen Lewis review
What makes a genius? Pushed to define it, we might say it's a combination of extraordinary talent and drive, often accompanied by a dash of eccentricity or madness. Ultimately, the designation is conferred by hype; it's essentially an offshoot of celebrity, which is why, as journalist Helen Lewis notes in her new book. 'A genius needs a story as well as achievements'. Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso all made pioneering breakthroughs in their respective fields while living unconventional lives that later became the stuff of legend. Lewis wants us to look at these figures in a more clear-eyed way, and see them as the selfish characters they often were. The lustre of genius, she observes, can provide cover for a multitude of sins: 'alcoholism, family abandonment, unfaithfulness, abuse, weirdness, failure to take responsibility'. Since others invariably have to pick up the slack, this amounts to a form of exploitation. Reflecting on Leo Tolstoy's treatment of his wife, Sophia Tolstaya, over the course of their 48-year marriage, Lewis concludes that the Russian novelist 'was a genius, and a parasite'. The concept of genius presupposes a hierarchy of innate talent, and this comes with baggage, because the science of intelligence testing belongs to the same intellectual tradition that brought us eugenics and so-called scientific racism. Lewis introduces us to some of its notable thinkers, beginning with the Victorian anthropologist Francis Galton, whose 1869 book Hereditary Genius proposed that 'greatness' ran in families, and including several of his 20th-century disciples, such as the British social psychologist Hans Eysenck and the US physicist William Shockley. Surveying the lives and works of these men, we notice certain recurring themes: iffy research, a tendency to overlook the importance of structural and material factors in determining success, and an enthusiasm for racial hierarchies. 'Something about the subject of intelligence has a warping effect on its most furious proponents,' writes Lewis, though it's probably the other way round – the subject seems to attract people who are neurotically fixated with dominance. For such individuals, the idea of genius functions as a self-validating affectation; it 'makes a fetish of contrarianism, and flatters the 'free thinker' or 'heterodox intellectual' into moving from scepticism to conspiracism'. For his admirers among today's online right, Elon Musk's gaucheness is only further proof of his smarts. The book's central message is that we should refrain from putting people on pedestals just because they happen to be talented. This is sensible, and Lewis's suggestion that we should apply the term 'genius' to specific works, rather than individual people, is persuasive. But the idea that large swathes of the reading public urgently need to be disabused of 'the genius myth' is questionable. In one of several sweeping assertions written in the first-person plural, Lewis declares: 'We love to contemplate lone rebels, indulge tortured artists and downplay the contributions of those around the genius to paint a more satisfying portrait of superhuman achievement.' Do we? There is an irritating circularity about such pronouncements, whereby the author projects on to the reader the very cliches that underlie her own analysis. The Genius Myth is one of those popular nonfiction books in which an author sells you the disease in order to sell you the cure. As is customary in this genre, it comes with its own bespoke jargon: Lewis has coined a term – 'the deficit model of genius' – to denote the prevalence of certain handicaps or character flaws among extremely talented scientists and artists. A banal truism is thus passed off as sociological insight. Lewis strives for the easy, conversational style of a Ted Talk, but her attempt at a pally register comes off stilted and ingratiating. The prose is remarkably heavy on italicisation, which lends a rather laboured feel to the exposition – at times, Lewis sounds as if she is trying to convince herself, quite as much as the reader, that something worthwhile is being imparted. A striking feature of this book is its tone of ambient philistinism, which comes through in a number of revealing asides. Reading Lewis's kooky capsule summary of James Joyce's contribution to English literature ('what-if novels, but harder to read'), her high-handed dismissal of 'self-conscious precocity and ambition' in film, and her unnecessarily conspiratorial admission that she found Peter Jackson's Beatles documentary, Get Back, 'quite boring', one can't help wondering if her misgivings about genius might be a bridge for certain personal hangups about rarefied art, and the people who make it. Lewis chides Eysenck for his 'airy, assured judgments', but she's not above emitting some wind of her own. Her contention that Picasso's womanising provided 'an aspirational ideal to lower-status men trapped in bourgeois domesticity and wage slavery', and that Donald Trump is therefore his 'analogue', is little more than a therapeutic rant. And Lewis surely overstates her point when she says that Picasso is 'revered' not in spite of his personal shortcomings, but literally 'because of them'. Again, her own viewpoint is projected outwards: since it's simply inconceivable that people could care that much about the artworks, anyone who admires Picasso must admire him primarily as a shagger, not a painter. Those credulous Musk fanboys notwithstanding, belief in innate genius – and the special prerogatives afforded to those thought to possess it – is probably less pronounced today than at any point since the 60s. We are increasingly familiar with the stories of brilliant artists who are, or were, terrible human beings, thanks to a slew of articles over recent years, as well as books such as Claire Dederer's Monsters. With The Genius Myth, Lewis clambers on to a bandwagon that was already starting to creak when, in 2023, the Brooklyn Museum in New York hosted a widely panned exhibition dedicated to interrogating Picasso's misogyny. At some point, it will grind to a halt. The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers is published by Jonathan Cape (£22). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
