Health care: what's science got to do with it?

摘要

An international conference on the scientific basis of health services will take place in October at the Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ Conference Centre in London (see advertisement in this issue). Its purpose is to review the applications of science to health service problems, to consider the influence of scientific and technological advances on health care, and to examine the effect of changes in the health service on the organisation and conduct of research. The conference is being organised by the NHS research and development programme with the help of the BAf J. Ensuring a strong and productive relation between health services and science is an important contemporary challenge. Scientific progress calls into question aspects of conventional practice and places new demands on knowledge and flexibility. At the same time the prospects for progress have never been brighter. Advances in science relevant to health come from increasingly diverse sources: biology and biotechnology, chemistry, physics and bioengineering, epidemiology, clinical and health services research, and the range of social sciences from anthropology to economics. The two way interaction between science and health seems more obvious than before. Current work on the genetics of common diseases, for example, raises economic, psychological, and ethical issues, while the effects of stress and social and economic factors on health pose new and unresolved scientific questions.