About
This is a place for things I read, write, and do; generally within the themes of medicine, technology, books, and recently 3D printing.
Please feel free to get in touch about anything on or off this site.
Latest
-
AI in Anaesthesia
A domain expert on your shoulder
Artificial intelligence already has changed anaesthesia. Before we called it AI, we called it machine learning, and before that it was simply statistics. These lie on a continuum of methods that allow us to offload thinking. We use their products daily in the form of risk calculators, pharmacokinetic models, and waveform analysis.
-
What to get the Person who has Everything?
Printing my brother's skull for fun and profit
It’s that time of year. The one when you’re desperately trying to think of present ideas for your nearest and dearest – maybe they’ve given you a few ideas, maybe they have hobby which requires a steady supply of supporting materials, or maybe you’re just doing booze this year. Just possibly you’ve bought yourself a 3D printer, and are desperately shoehorning printed presents into people’s stockings. So that’s how I came to be printing my brother’s skull.
-
Low-Background Lexicography
Salting the Earth with Artificial Intelligence
Almost 79 years ago, in the deserts of New Mexico, atoms were torn apart, releasing colossal amounts of energy, and very importantly not igniting the atmosphere causing nuclear armageddon. Can you tell I’ve watched Oppenheimer recently? Politics, ethics, and morality aside, the 16th of July 1945 is a watershed moment in time. However, we may be standing at another brink in human history, and one that may have a reach further than nuclear fission.
-
Be Kind to be Cruel
The thorny issue of the GMC enforcing kindness
The General Medical Council wants doctors to be kind, and when the GMC wants doctors to be something, they add it to their set of standards, Good Clinical Practice. On the face of it, this doesn’t sound like it would be too controversial – who wouldn’t want their doctor to be kind? However, this has engendered a slew of discussion, critique, and in some cases, fear.
-
Hunterian Revisited
A tour through London's finest glass jar emporium
Like many an aspiring doctor1, in my youth I undertook the pilgrimage to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. As London’s finest emporium of grisly things in jars, there was always plenty to entertain, and plenty to inflict on the squeamish. After a long-awaited revamp, delayed slightly by COVID, this Mecca of the medically inclined has reopened at last.