Sir Muir Gray and Lucy Abel debate: Is value-based health care nothing more than health econimics re-packaged or is health economics nothing more than only one of the six contributors to value-based healthcare?

Health economics is concerned with how to allocate resources in healthcare to optimise outcomes. Health economists have developed a variety of methods to evaluate whether the cost of providing healthcare interventions is worth the benefits. In other words, whether they are good value. These are based on preferences expressed by wider society relating to the value of increasing the length and quality of life. These values can be applied to an intervention by linking them via clinical outcomes.

Value-based healthcare’s concern with technical, personal, and allocative value are defined as, respectively, whether an intervention improves clinical outcomes; whether those clinical outcomes are meaningful for patients; and whether those improved outcomes are worth the costs. In this way it covers the same core principles as health economics, while ignoring over 50 years of research in this field.

Recent attempts to implement value-based healthcare have ignored issues such as interaction between interventions and fully considering opportunity cost. As a result, value-based healthcare adds little to the existing body of research, and diverts investment from proven methods, which risks reducing the value achievable in the NHS.

Sir Muir Gray is now working with both NHS England and Public Health England to bring about a transformation of care with the aim of increasing value for both populations and individuals and published a series of How To Handbooks for example, How to Get Better Value Healthcare, How To Build Healthcare Systems and How To Create the Right Healthcare Culture.

His hobby is ageing and how to cope with it and he has published books for publish a book for people aged seventy called Sod 70! one for the younger decade called Sod 60! This with Dr Claire Parker, and his book for people aged 40-60, titled Midlife, appeared in January 2017. Other books in series on Sod Ageing are Sod it, Eat Well, with Anita Bean and Sod Sitting, Get Moving with Diana Moran, the Green Goddess. For people of all ages Dr Gray’s Walking Cure summarises the evidence on this wonderful means of feeling well, reducing the risk of disease and minimising disability should disease strike.

Lucy Abel is a health economist working within the field of primary care and is part of the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. She collaborates with research groups to bring the tools of economic evaluation to primary care health science research.

This talk is being held as part of the Practice of Evidence-Based Health Care course which is part of the Evidence-Based Health Care Programme. This is a free event and members of the public are welcome to attend.

What if I like research but not teaching? What if I do not like any of them? What alternatives to academia do I have?

We would like to introduce the “SIU Career Sessions”, a termly round of talks focusing on alternative careers for PhD students and postdocs, which will definitely help you with these questions. Get ready to hear from experts and explore new career paths! If you are not sure what is next after your PhD or would just like to be aware of your options, these events are for you!

Our first session will focus on a promising field for PhD-level scientists: industry. In this event, attendees will have the opportunity to hear from high profile speakers from two pharmaceutical companies with different focuses: Novo Nordisk and Immunocore. The speakers will bring not only information about the attributes they seek in potential employees, but also the daily life in industry and opportunities for a successful and stable career in big pharmaceutical companies. We will also learn from their first-hand experience how they took the career transition path to industry.

Is industry for you? Come find out with us!
As always, this event is completely free and everyone is welcome.

As part of Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, Professor Peter Silburn from Queensland Brain Institute in Australia will present “Deep brain stimulation for human brain disorders: Expanding indications and the brain machine interface”.

Award-winning composer Jonathan Dove talks to broadcaster Kate Kennedy about music, war and commemoration. Their discussion will be illustrated with excerpts from his compositions.
Dove’s works include In Damascus, To An Unknown Soldier and the TV opera When She Died, a reflection on the death of Princess Diana.

Plastics (polymers) and other organic materials are typically thought of as insulating materials that surround conducting metals (e.g. copper) to protect us from shocks. However, through careful design, a class of so-called “pi-conjugated” organic compounds and polymers can be both semiconducting and conducting, and can be processed as flexible and in some cases stretchable thin films. In addition, these materials can be tuned to absorb and emit light across the visible spectrum. These pi-conjugated materials have been incorporated into devices such as organic light emitting diode (OLED) based displays common in cell phones (e.g. Samsung phones and the iPhone X) and now televisions (LG). OLEDs are now a multi-billion dollar market (> $10 billion expected in 2018), that is forecasted to grow rapidly over the next decade. OLEDs are now under active development for a variety of high efficiency light applications, with high-end lumenaires being marketed by a variety of companies. In addition, these materials have found use in organic solar cells, and also as components in a new class of highly efficient “perovskite” solar cells.

In this presentation, Professor Seth Marder, Visitor to Oxford Martin Senior Fellow, Professor Henry Snaith, will provide a brief introduction to how chemists develop these materials, introduce the basic working concepts of OLEDs and photovoltaics, show how organic compounds have been used in these technologies, and touch on both the strengths and weaknesses of organic materials for these various applications.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, ENT Surgeon Dr Gerald Fain will discuss “Prospective assessment of an innovative and multidisciplinary treatment protocol for chronic tinnitus”.

Professor Harriet Ritvo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Gone but not Forgotten: Coming to Grips with Extinction
5.30—7.00, Seminar Room 3, St Anne’s College

Extinction is a timely and controversial topic now, as it has been for centuries. That is not, of course, to say that the focus of contention has remained constant. At first the main question, couched at least as much in theological as in scientific terms (that is, in terms resonant with later debates about evolution), was whether it could happen. Localized anthropogenic extinctions, most famously that of the dodo, were noticed by European travelers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the intentional extermination of undesirable animals like wolves at home did not figure in such debates). The dwindling and disappearance of more populous and widespread species, including the passenger pigeon, the quagga, and (nearly) the American bison, in the nineteenth century sparked a different kind of concern among the overlapping communities of hunters, naturalists, and conservationists, which helped to inspire the earliest national parks and wildlife reserves.

St Anne’s College is proud to host an inspiring group of entrepreneurs to demystify the field of entrepreneurship and explain some of the paths to a career in this field.

Our speakers will present their first-hand experiences from different areas of the start-up ecosystem, from founding and growing successful companies to investing in the next generation of entrepreneurs. The talks will be followed by a Q&A panel session featuring young entrepreneurs sharing their journeys to show their routes into the field. With this range of involvement, you will be able to get a feel for how to be a part of start-ups from joining an existing team to developing your own ideas.

This event is open to everyone and free to attend. There will be a networking drinks reception following the talks where you will be able to carry on discussion.

Matt Clifford – Matt is a co-founder and chief executive of Entrepreneur First (EF), the world’s leading technology start-up builder. Since 2011 they have helped build over 140 start-ups that are now collectively worth over $1 billion. EF’s mission is to bring together individuals who want to start their entrepreneurial journeys and in this process, sthey help put people together to create cofounding teams that go on to build companies.

David Langer – During his Maths degree at Oxford, David founded GroupSpaces – a software company to help university clubs and societies manage themselves, hosting over 5 million memberships. After six years working on this, he then moved on to found Zesty, a Y Combinator backed corporate meal provider based in Silicon Valley that has raised over $20 million from investors. David is also an angel investor and startup advisor working with over 20 companies across Europe, Asia and the United States

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series, Professor David Cranston from the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford will discuss ‘Medicine in Art’.

True to our name, we bring opera anywhere! Our latest new Puccini production goes into the woods at Wytham!

Puccini’s Heroines at Wytham Woods! – 12th May

Puccini’s Heroines – 1.30pm to 3.30pm – FREE ENTRY as part of Oxfordshire Art Weeks
Opera Anywhere present performances of some of the greatest Puccini operatic arias by female roles. Performed around the Wytham Studio at Wytham Woods between 1.30pm and 3.30pm – during Oxfordshire Art Weeks. Free of charge to attend and not ticket required.

Sister Angelica – 7pm at the Wytham Woods Chalet – Tickets £15/£10: online or call the box office on 0333 666 3366.
Bar and Refreshments available from 5.30pm at Wytham Woods Chalet, so why not arrive early, park in the usual car park and walk up through the woods – how about bringing a picnic?

Its a chance to visit, walk through and enjoy the woods without requiring the normal Walking Permit.
The staged performance of one of Puccini’s most moving operas, Sister Angelica, will take place in the woods opposite the Wytham Woods Chalet or if wet in the barn adjacent to the Chalet.

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/date/493969

“3.5 million cyber-crimes recorded, true figure could be 20.5 million” – this is just one of the headlines that exemplify how significant cybercrime is today.

Cybercrime has been ruthless, victimising everyone from corporations to charities and the elderly. In this light-hearted talk, Jason examines the topic of cybercrime with a focus on how criminals target individuals and exploit how we think, reason and behave. This touches on the fields of computer science and psychology. Additionally, Jason provides some tips and tricks for how you can protect yourself and your families online.

If you’ve ever wondered about cybercrime, come along tonight – Jason guarantees that fun (honest!) will be had by all!

As part of Think Human Festival, this one-off pop-up event is a unique opportunity for visitors of all ages to interact with leading academics from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes University. The academics will act as ‘human books’ from a range of perspectives; historic, literary, political, legal and educational for 15 minutes per ‘book loan’ against the back drop of revolution. ‘RESIST! REMAIN!’ will provide the chance to engage with and access humanities and social science disciplines in a fun, original and inspiring way, and aims to create a lasting impression of how these subjects can help to understand what it is to be human.

Please note that this event is free, open to all ages and there is no need to book ahead. Please come to Bonn Square and start a interesting conversation around revolution!

Our world is driven by technology and while it offers a variety of benefits to society, it also exposes us to a series of new and complex cybersecurity risks. These can relate to how we conduct business, how we engage with colleagues, family and friends, or even how organisations and individuals interact with new platforms such as social media and the internet-of-things.

In this talk, Dr Jason Nurse will explore these issues from the perspective of Cybersecurity. His talk begins with a brief discussion of what cybersecurity is, and then moves on to a detailed presentation of some of the significant challenges facing cybersecurity practice and research. Topics that will be covered include: the challenge of social engineering and why it is one of the most popular attacks today; the internet-of-things and its security and privacy implications; and how criminals use social media as a key platform for intelligence gathering on potential targets. These are all topics that will become critical in the future as society grows and technology becomes even more embedded into our daily lives.

If you’d like to find out more or reach Jason online, check out Twitter @jasonnurse!

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series at the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Ms Shannon Gunawardana, Ms Kathryn Ford and Professor Kokila Lakhoo will present ‘Global Surgery: Paediatric Surgical Team’.

Ms Shannon Gunawardana (student) will talk about ‘Explore’
Ms Kathryn Ford (trainee) will speak on ‘Trainees and global surgery’
Professor Kokila Lakhoo (consultant) will discuss ‘Global initiative for children’s surgery’

Join us for live music in the John Henry Brookes Building – Forum before the panel discussion at 18:00 in the Lecture Theatre.
Most political movements are accompanied by protest songs. This Think Human Festival event aims to explore their rich tradition and assess their meaning and impact over time. Peggy Seeger, Andrew Scheps, Dr Angela McShane and Professor John Street will shed light on the historical context of protest songs, their production and sound, their political meaning and power, and their personal performance.

Our panel will examine the historical roots of protest songs, explore their impact on social and political movements, and explain what makes a song effective as protest. They’ll also discuss whether protest music is a dead or thriving art, and ask how far gender plays a role in their creation and performance.

Peggy Seeger is a celebrated singer of traditional Anglo-American songs and activist songmaker whose experience spans 60 years of performing, travel and songwriting. Dr Angela McShane leads the Research Development Team for the Wellcome Collection, an expert on early modern protest songs. Andrew Scheps is a Grammy award winning mix engineer, recording engineer, producer, and record label owner. John Street is Professor of Politics at the University of East Anglia and specialises in the politics of popular music.

Join us for live music in the Forum of the John Henry Brookes Building from 17:00 before the panel discussion in the John Henry Brookes Lecture Theatre at 18:00.

Most political movements are accompanied by protest songs. This Think Human Festival event aims to explore their rich tradition and assess their meaning and impact over time. Peggy Seeger, Andrew Scheps, Dr Angela McShane and Professor John Street will shed light on the historical context of protest songs, their production and sound, their political meaning and power, and their personal performance.

Our panel will examine the historical roots of protest songs, explore their impact on social and political movements, and explain what makes a song effective as protest. They’ll also discuss whether protest music is a dead or thriving art, and ask how far gender plays a role in their creation and performance.

Peggy Seeger is a celebrated singer of traditional Anglo-American songs and activist songmaker whose experience spans 60 years of performing, travel and songwriting. Dr Angela McShane leads the Research Development Team for the Wellcome Collection, an expert on early modern protest songs. Andrew Scheps is a Grammy award winning mix engineer, recording engineer, producer, and record label owner. John Street is Professor of Politics at the University of East Anglia and specialises in the politics of popular music.

From palaeolithic shamanism to the politics of classical Rome, interpreting the movements and sounds of birds was highly valued as a way of learning what forces might be influencing the events of our world, whether envisaged as gods, the weather or natural laws.

For the second talk of the series, Geoff Sample will follow this idea and its flow through various Eurasian cultures in our attitudes to, and interpretations of, the sound languages of other species; and on to contemporary scientific research and listening with a bioacoustic ear.

Geoff Sample is a field recordist who has concentrated on wildlife and natural soundscapes for the last 30 years. He’s the author and producer of a series of Collins sound guides, including the best-selling Collins Bird Songs & Calls, contributes sound and discussion to radio & TV (Tweet of the Day, Countryfile, the Verb) and collaborates with contemporary artists on installations, exhibitions and performances (Marcus Coates, Hanna Tuulikki, Mike Collier).

Sound I’m Particular is a Pay What You Decide talk series that aims to provide a forum to discuss and interrogate listening as both subject and object, exploring the various guises of contemporary listening practices with talks and demonstrations by artists and academics from all over the country; ranging from topics such as augury and Nan Shepherd, to Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf, to field recording and Twin Peaks.

The adoption of big data, machine learning, and simulation software in biology and drug discovery have allowed for rapid progress in these fields. So far these technologies have aided discoveries, but can they eventually replace human effort and experiments? We are inviting a panel of experts at the forefront of these technologies to answer this titular question, and evaluate the role of computers in the future of biology and medicine.

Time: 5:30 pm on 23rd May
Venue: Lecture Theatre B, Department of Computer Science 15 Parks Road

Limited spots available.
There will be a networking & drinks reception after the event.
As always, this event is free and everyone is welcome!

About the speakers:

Professor Blanca Rodriguez

Professor of Computational Medicine

Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Basic Biomedical Sciences

Blanca was born in Valencia, Spain, where she attended the Lycee Francais de Valencia, and graduated as an Electronics Engineer from the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain, in 1997. She then started a PhD in the Integrated Laboratory of Bioengineering supervised by Prof. Chema Ferrero and at the same time became an Assistant Professor in Electronics and Biomedical Instrumentation at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia. During her PhD studies, she investigated the causes of extracellular potassium accumulation during acute ischaemia using a mathematical model of single cell action potential. After graduating in 2001, she joined Prof. Natalia Trayanova’s group at Tulane University in New Orleans (now at Johns Hopkins University), as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Her research focused on the mechanisms of cardiac vulnerability to electric shocks in normal and globally ischemic hearts. In 2004, she won the First Prize in the Young Investigator Award Competition in Basic Science of the Heart Rhythm Society. After spending two years in New Orleans, she joined Oxford University in August 2004, as a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. David Gavaghan, funded by the Integrative Biology Project. From 2007 to 2013, Blanca Rodriguez held a Medical Research Council Career Development fellowship and she has also been awarded funding by European Comission, Royal Society, EPSRC, Wellcome Trust, BHF and Leverhulme Trust. She is currently a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Basic biomedical Science and Professor of Computational Medicine.

Dr. Romain Talon

XChem Senior Support Scientist

Romain joined the Structural Genomics Consortium Oxford in 2014, where his initial role was to contribute to the Diamond Light Source X-ray fragment screening facility XChem: “X-ray structure-accelerated, synthesis-aligned fragment medicinal chemistry”. He test-drove the new experiment with real-life SGC projects, stress-tested the XChem throughput and established what was required for XChem team to be open to external users. He then made sure that XChem was used as a routine experiment to carry out X-ray fragment screening at the SGC. Romain thus became an “XChem Liaison Scientist” for the SGC. Over the past two years, he has coordinated and provided his expertise in crystallography for a total 27 fragment screening campaigns at the SGC. This number includes three fragment screening projects he carried out himself. Romain moved to the Diamond Light Source synchrotron to be a Senior Support Scientist for XChem. On top of his user support role, Romain is now improving his knowledge in computational chemistry and expertise that to provide for XChem users at Diamond.

Talk followed by questions and discussion

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, Mr Bruce George, Dr Roel Bolckmans, Dr Keshara Ratnatunga and Dr Sandeep Singh from the Department of Colorectal Surgery at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will discuss ‘Preventing recurrence after Crohn’s disease surgery’.

The international Psychiatry film festival, Medfest, is back again for another year. This time, through three bespoke short films, we hope to challenge your ideas and perceptions on the concept of ‘silence’. After each showing, the film will be discussed by a panel of distinguished experts, before the floor is opened to the audience.

All are welcome to join us for this FREE event.
The showing will be followed by a complimentary wine and nibbles reception.

Our confirmed panellists include:
Professor Matthew Broome: Chair in Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health, Director of the Institute for Mental Healthin Birmingham. He has also previously been the Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Warwick and Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. His interests include the philosophy and ethics of mental health and neuroscience, early psychosis, delusions and cognitive instability.
Dr Maria Grazia Turri: A psychiatrist and theatre scholar. As a lecturer of MSc Creative Arts and Mental Health she teaches on psychoanalysis, theatre history and theories, and the intersection between psychiatry and the arts. She also works part-time as a Consultant Psychiatrist in Medical Psychotherapy in the NHS.
Dr Gerti Stegen: Director of Medical Education for the Oxford School of Psychiatry. She is also a consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy.

For more information on our panellists and the films being shown visit our facebook event page https://www.facebook.com/events/2061930723857857/

Join us for our Blackwell’s Open Mic Night, where there will be performances from an array of talented local performers, across a wide mix of creativity. Everyone is welcome to come along and listen, places for this event are free to register. Information about who will be performing will be updated when the final line-up is confirmed.

If you would like to register to perform, places are still available please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk. Each performer will have a 10 minute slot to showcase their work.

To allow opportunity and new talent to join the stage, we are not accepting performers from the last session in March as a main headliner. There will be a slot at the end that is open to drop in on the night for shorter pieces such as a poem or a song, and everyone is welcome to come forward.

For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call 01865 333623.

The evening will start with the film Mad to be Normal, This concerns RD Laing’s unconventional approach to psychotherapy and also his equally unconventional life. It stars David Tennant, Elisabeth Moss, Michael Gambon and Gabriel Byrne and raises many important questions: What is the nature of madness? What challenges confront psychoanalysts? Are psychoactive drugs ever effective? These topics will be discussed immediately after the film by a panel of experts which will include:
Roland Littlewood ( Professor of Anthropology and Psychiatry at UCL)
Richard Bentall (Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool)
Robert Mullan (Director of Mad to be Normal)
Farnaz Arshid (GP and prison doctor who has worked with refugees/victims of torture in Sierra Leone)
Athar Yawar (has been psychiatrist for Helen Bamber’s Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture and a Senior Editor at the Lancet)
Tickets (£5) will be sold at the door.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, Dr Andrew Vickers from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York discusses “How do you know if you are a good surgeon? The MSKCC approach to surgical quality assurance”.

The Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences invites junior doctors and researchers who are not yet faculty, but are interested in an academic career to an informal discussion with Dr Andrew Vickers from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Solar energy, once a niche application for a limited market, has become the cheapest and fastest-growing power source on earth. What’s more, its potential is nearly limitless – every hour the sun beams down more energy than the world uses in a year. But Varun Sivaram, Fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations, former Oxford researcher, and author of a new book, Taming the Sun, warns that the world is not yet equipped to harness erratic sunshine to meet most of its energy needs. And if solar’s current surge peters out, prospects for replacing fossil fuels and averting catastrophic climate change will dim.

Innovation can brighten those prospects, Sivaram will argue. Financial innovation is already enticing deep-pocketed investors to fund solar projects around the world, from the sunniest deserts to the poorest villages. Technological innovation could replace today’s solar panels with coatings as cheap as paint and employ artificial photosynthesis to store intermittent sunshine as convenient fuels. And systemic innovation could add flexibility to the world’s power grids and other energy systems so they can dependably channel the sun’s unreliable energy. Unleashing all this innovation will require visionary public policy: funding researchers developing next-generation solar technologies, refashioning energy systems and economic markets, and putting together a diverse clean energy portfolio.

This talk will be followed by a drinks reception and book signing, all welcome.

Professor Paul Johnson from the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences (NDS) at Oxford University will discuss: ‘Pancreatic Islet Transplantation – realising the goals’.

Ms Natalie Durkin from Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Professor Kokila Lakhoo from NDS will talk about ‘Ovarian Preservation – the big freeze’.

Welcome to the first event in our two-part China-UK Science Innovation Series!

In 2016 alone, China invested USD236 billion in Research and Development, making it the second largest investor in innovation globally. Given this, as well as China’s rapid economic growth, Science Innovation Union (SIU) and the Oxford Chinese Life Sciences Society (OCLSS) have decided to team up to hold an outstanding two-session event on this exciting area of development. Attendees will hear from a distinguished group of high profile speakers coming from the government, academic and private sectors. Our audience will have the chance to learn about how China and the UK have been working together to boost innovation, opportunities available for funding and to get an update on the latest leading-edge research.

Speakers:
Sunan Jiang (Minister Counsellor for Science and Technology, the Chinese Embassy in the UK)

Dr Wenming Ji (Managing Director at Oxford Cardiomox Ltd.; Former Senior Consultant at Isis Innovation Ltd; Former Project Manager at Innovation China UK)

Dr Shisong Jiang (CTO of Oxford Vacmedix)

Schedule:
17:30-17:40 Registration

17:40-18:00 Speaker 1

18:05-18:25 Speaker 2

18:30-18:50 Speaker 3

18:50-19:10 Q&A

19:10-20:00 Networking

As always, this event is free and open to the public!

The second part of this series is entitled:
“Building bridges between UK and China: From investment to ongoing global research advances” and will take place on the evening of June 26th.
Please keep an eye out for further details in the coming weeks!

A History of Food Fraud and Its Detection
Dr Duncan Campbell (DPhil Soil Solution Chemistry, 1986)

Duncan’s talk will cover the long history of food adulteration from medieval Germany to 19th century America, the pioneers who applied scientific methods to its detection in the 19th century and some modern examples from Britain and further afield.

Duncan was a student member of St Cross College from 1982 to 1985. After his time at St Cross and a period of post-doctoral research, he broadened his horizons to apply chemical analysis to public protection and gained the qualification required to act as a Public Analyst in 1994.

Although small in number, Public Analysts play a key role in enforcing many aspects of food legislation in the UK, directing the analysis of food and providing expert opinion on the results. A leading member of the profession, Duncan has contributed to the wider debate on protecting the public’s interests in relation to food, as well as TV programmes including the second episode of Netflix’s documentary series ‘Rotten’ which sets out to expose fraud and corruption in today’s global food industry.

Drinks reception to follow.