Causality, Complexity and Evidence in Health Sciences
A Transdisciplinary Philosophy of Medicine Network
The video chat was recorded by Stephen King, co-founder of Vocal Health Education, and appears in the second tier qualification they offer; The Vocal Health Practitioner. Watch the video on physical therapist Walt Fritz‘s website, Foundations in Manual Therapy – Science Informed Manual Therapy Education, where he also offers a range of educational resources on patient centred manual care.
Instead of a normal final report for the CauseHealth project, we decided to write an open access book specifically for healthcare professionals. The book is meant as a resource for those interested in the relationship between their daily practice and the philosophical assumptions that motivate this practice. Continue reading “New CauseHealth resource in progress for healthcare professionals”
CauseHealth is pleased to announce “Towards a Person Centered Healthcare and Practice” – a conference on philosophy, persons and value. This event is in memory of our friend and CauseHealth collaborator, Stephen Tyreman.
Continue reading “Conference – “Towards a Person Centered Healthcare and Practice” (10 May 2019)”
by Rani Lill Anjum
This week on the evening of 19 November 2018, we lost our dear friend and colleague, Stephen Tyreman. Stephen was involved in the CauseHealth project since the very beginning and will be missed deeply. In the spring, we will organise a final CauseHealth event in his memory. Continue reading “In memory of Stephen Tyreman”
At 1 October 2018, a new collaborative research project started at NMBU that brings CauseHealth into its second phase; of CauseHealth pharmacovigilance. Continue reading “New research collaboration between Uppsala Monitoring Centre and CauseHealth”
Technology should make our life better, easier and safer. And yet, medicines, pesticides, nanotechnologies, biotechnologies et cetera, may represent a potential threat to health and environment. Some of the new technologies might be safe for most, but they could still be harmful for vulnerable individuals, communities or ecosystems. Continue reading “CAUSAL DISPOSITIONS IN RISK ANALYSIS”
We have seen a lot of interest in the CauseHealth approach and issues during these last years, especially among clinicians who see a need for a more person centered healthcare. Can this be useful also outside the clinic? Yes, according to senior medical advisor at the WHO Uppsala Monitoring Center for Drug Safety, Ralph Edwards. In a recent perspectives article in the UMC report, he argues that dispositionalism can be useful for dealing with complexity, individual variation and the patient’s unique context. Continue reading “Living with complexity and big data. Causal dispositionalim enters pharmacovigilance”
by Elena Rocca
In the early 19th century, the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis noticed from his clinical experience that antiseptic routines in healthcare reduced infections at childbirth. After carrying out some studies on the matter, he proposed that the practice of disinfecting hands in the obstetrician ward of the Vienna General Hospital, where he worked at the time, would have reduced the incidence of puerperal fever. However, for that time this seemed as an implausible suggestion. The germ theory of disease was still unheard of (Pasteur developed such theory only some decades later), and therefore there was no accepted understanding of how disease could be transmitted from one organism to the other. Semmelweis suggestion was therefore rejected by the medical community. Continue reading “DATA AND THEORY: NEW CAUSEHEALTH PAPER ABOUT THE PROBLEM OF WEIGHING COMPLEX EVIDENCE IN MEDICINE.”
Evidence Live is an annual conference, jointly hosted by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford and The BMJ. This year, CauseHealth was represented in two of the sessions, by Elena Rocca and Rani Lill Anjum. Continue reading “CauseHealth goes to Evidence Live”
Rani Lill Anjum
The evidence-based medicine movement was intended as a methodological revolution. Its proponents suggested the best way to establish the effectiveness of treatment and new criteria to choose between available treatments without bias. Philosophically, however, these changes were not so innocent, at least not ontologically speaking. In bringing itself closer to science, medicine has become less suitable for dealing with complex illnesses, individual variations and, as I will argue, with causation in general. Continue reading “Evidence based medicine. What evidence, whose medicine, and on what basis?”
Causality, Complexity and Evidence in Health Sciences 