Shared risk / shared reward: key to clinical innovation between private and public sectors?

“Emperor’s New Clothes or the Way Forward? The Opportunities & Challenges of Clinical Innovation”. This was 2015’s teaser title for the Cardiff University Innovation Network event, held at the Heath Hospital in Cardiff.

While my professional links with clinical healthcare are limited, I continue to find the subject area compelling. In Wales it’s a perennial political football. Part of my problem in observing and digesting these events might be that I’m hankering for some BBC Question Time style debate, which is never likely to happen.

2013 – Innovation in healthcare
2014 – Dying to talk – an event on Healthcare In Wales

Having attended the previous two related events in 2013 and 2014, my trilogy would be completed with one more trip to north Cardiff, so I went see if this one would unearth anything new for the medical layman.

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Comfortably dumb? The next revolution will be psychological not technological

This blog seems to have turned into a place where I irregularly write about public lectures at Cardiff University.  Apologies for being deeply unimaginative, but here is another one.

In the next ten years some of the biggest advances in business and government will come from new insights into human psychology and behaviour.

This was the hook for a Cardiff Business School lecture by Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group UK, an enormous advertising group.

The IET/BCS Turing Lecture – beyond cognition?

This year the annual Turing Lecture series from the Institute of Engineering and Technology and The Chartered Institute for IT was delivered by Dr. Bernard Meyerson, Vice President for Innovation at IBM.

Responsible for IBM’s corporate technical strategy, Global University Relations and the IBM Academy – a worldwide organisation of around 1,000 IBM technical leaders, it’s fair to say Dr. Meyerson is a highly respected figure in the world of computing, data and innovation.

Dying to talk – an event on Healthcare In Wales

Having attended this equivalent Cardiff University event last year and been encouraged by a level of tangible innovation, I was keen to take a return trip to see how the 2014 version compared. 

The event back on January 22nd seemed especially pertinent.  Leading the news headlines in Wales over the previous week had been two separate, tragic incidents in the north and south of Wales, both concerning excessive waiting times for ambulances, both leading to fatalities.  Additional stories this week have concerned the postponement of planned surgery across north Wales due to increased pressure, and a plan to centralise care for babies born in west Wales.

Smooth operator – Stephen Fear, phone box millionaire

Cardiff University’s latest Innovation Network event presented Stephen Fear, a lifelong entrepreneur who set up his first company in 1969, aged 16.  He bought a cleaning formula from an American company advertising in the Exchange & Mart, after claiming a council estate phone box as his personal office for transatlantic calls.

Stephen Fear calmly took to the lectern on an unsettled autumn evening which blustered and spat outside.  His was a sturdy and unflashy presence: smart business suit, no tie, a gentle West Country lilt to his voice suggestive of the Bristol roots.