Journalist, editor, analyst and trainer on computing, government, climate and data
David Cameron has built up a strong rapport with his constituents in the small towns and villages of Witney, a safe Conservative seat with high hopes for his future, says local resident SA Mathieson
A profile for the politics section of the Guardian website on David Cameron and West Oxfordshire, the area covered by his Witney constituency, when he became Conservative party leader.
I still live in the area, and write about the likes of its tweeting chief policeman and the romance of its long-distance A-roads for community newspaper Chipping Norton News.
Continue reading “‘It’s our David!’”
First published in Health Service Journal, 8 September 2005
Across continental Europe, patients visiting a doctor take a plastic card to prove their entitlement to healthcare. Increasingly, these cards hold a microchip allowing payments for treatment to be processed and if necessary refunded more quickly than in the past.
But smartcards can also be used as electronic keys to patient records, boosting security and demonstrating consent.
Continue reading “Smart move: use of health smartcards in EU countries”
The plethora of illegal pornography on the internet requires international policing. Is web technology up to tracking offenders, asks SA Mathieson
On Home Office plans to criminalise the possession of extreme adult pornography. Continue reading “Image control”
The London bombings have intensified the debate over the government’s plans to introduce compulsory identity cards. SA Mathieson reports
The plans discussed here were broadly those which entered law through the Identity Cards Act 2006. I wrote about identity cards from 2002 until 2011, and have published a history of ID cards in Britain: more information here.
Continue reading “In the name of the law”
Article on data analysis in the NHS, first published in Health Service Journal, 5 July 2005
Two years ago, Sheila Leatherman, research professor at University of North Carolina’s school of public health, and Kim Sutherland, a senior research associate at University of Cambridge’s Judge institute of management, wrote ‘The Quest for Quality in the NHS’ for the Nuffield Trust, comparing England’s NHS to other developed countries.
The authors noted the lack of a ‘shared robust information base that provides a common understanding of the NHS’s strengths and weaknesses’. Now, Prof Leatherman and Dr Sutherland have attempted to show that such an information base, using independent and routinely-reported data, can and should be compiled – by doing it themselves, through compiling more than 100 charts from numerous sources into a single chartbook of NHS quality.
Continue reading “Charting a new course: data analysis of the NHS across the UK”
