Liz Dobson
banner
lizdobsonuk.bsky.social
Liz Dobson
@lizdobsonuk.bsky.social
Director, CEO. Strategic change and innovation in the NHS and health-related real world data & tech landscape. Human centric systems thinking, data & AI, ethics, risk & governance. Alternatively cyclist, biodiversist and mum. Likes making things happen
Pinned
go.bsky.app/9UXtjWW
Starting the starter pack for the IBD research community here on Bluesky!
A lot of key voices still about to make the move across - let me know when you get here, and I can add you
#ibdskies
Reposted by Liz Dobson
When excellent MPs stand up for what’s right and then get suspended by their party we should be very worried. Chris Hinchliff has been a staunch defender of nature and is far closer to the public view than the prime minster. Such arrogance 😡. Great quote here from Craig Bennett, agree 💯 .
July 16, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
This is “healthcare” in the United States. A pharmacy benefit manager randomly decided they just weren’t going to cover this man’s inhaler anymore, so he couldn’t afford it. He died of an asthma attack. Devastating.

www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...
Parents sue over son's asthma death days after inhaler price soared without warning
Cole Schmidtknecht, 22, had insurance but couldn’t afford to refill his asthma inhaler after the cost jumped from $70 to more than $500.
www.nbcnews.com
June 4, 2025 at 1:42 AM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
#NoMowMay has begun! 🌼

The rare chance to help nature by doing nothing.
May 1, 2025 at 7:59 AM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
‘Okay which one of you accidentally added Robert Cecil to the chat?’
March 24, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
"When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order."

Iya Prigogine, Noble prize-winning chemist
March 23, 2025 at 4:39 PM
One of the top two talks at #rewired25, @jessrmorley.bsky.social looking philosophically (& necessarily) deeper than the usual AI healthcare hype. TLDR summary: AI is systemic ie. Like electricity, and can be more effective at population level, but individual is where the current focus is
AI for population health not (just) individual health, and friendship bracelets for everyone. Thanks #ReWired25 and thanks @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social / Careful Industries for the world’s most perfect t-shirt.
March 20, 2025 at 9:43 AM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
Reposted by Liz Dobson
A reminder that cycle infrastructure allows more women to cycle
February 1, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
The Internet Archive has to date downloaded 500 terabytes of US government websites, which it crawls at the end of every presidential term. The whole archive is fully searchable. This effort's housed by a donation-funded nonprofit, not a branch of the US government. blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/e...
End of Term Web Archive – Preserving the Transition of a Nation | Internet Archive Blogs
blog.archive.org
February 1, 2025 at 12:58 AM
Here are some nice prickly pear also
February 1, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Away on hols, so please enjoy this beautiful sunset from last night instead of my usual musings. From Las Hayas on the Canary Island of La Gomera. Normal service will sadly be resumed soon
February 1, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
Reposted by Liz Dobson
My latest @bmj.com piece . Having spent much of Tuesday in a severely overcrowded ED with corridor/waiting room care galore & much of Monday on a ward unable to discharge patients waiting for community services that they absolutely *do* need - policy meets real life.

www.bmj.com/content/388/...
David Oliver: Losing too many NHS hospital beds has been an act of avoidable self-sabotage with predictable consequences
In recent decades we’ve surely lost too many general and acute hospital beds in the UK, without creating sufficient alternative capacity outside hospital. This has resulted in entirely predictable ris...
www.bmj.com
January 30, 2025 at 10:37 AM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
Efficient transport infrastructure often looks empty.

Inefficient infrastructure looks "busy".
A good reminder that cycle lanes and footpaths don't appear congested as they (mostly) allow people to move through quickly and efficiently.

Video taken from charlemont luas stop on a rainy morning.
January 29, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
So the secret is out. The ITV team that made Mr Bates vs the Post Office has been making a drama about the phone-hacking scandal. Featuring David Tennant as Nick Davies. And Mr Bates himself (aka Toby Jones) as me. An altogether less heroic role for Toby, but he’s brilliant as always
January 29, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
Fun fact: if you're buying from a creator on etsy, you can reduce their etsy selling fees from 6.5% to 2.5% by ordering via 'shopname.etsy.com' instead of 'etsy.com/shopname' or searching from the main site. It costs you the same but the creator makes more
January 22, 2025 at 8:39 PM
Amidst the DeepSeek debate, here is a highly readable and researched piece on whether it's the model (open code, remember) or run environment (local or cloud) that censors. It's the run environment, notably (state) controlled clouds. Which puts things in a very different perspective. Recc'd reading
Lots of discussion about the extent to which DeepSeek results are 'censored'. Found this piece useful – someone tried it out: 1) locally; 2) on official cloud host; 3) on third-part cloud. And concluded that censorship is more about cloud layer than model: interconnect.substack.com/p/was-zuck-r...
Was Zuck Right about Chinese AI Models?
Model censorship happens in the cloud
interconnect.substack.com
January 29, 2025 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
This morning I read that DeepSeek used training data generated from other language models which has companies like OpenAI fuming, and I can't stop thinking about how there's a lesson in there
January 28, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
A new UK group is suggesting a five-point manifesto to address the rise of SUVs www.suv-alliance.org.uk
SUV Alliance
www.suv-alliance.org.uk
January 28, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
EU medicines agency quits X & moves to Bluesky

"EMA will no longer post updates and content on X. We believe the X platform no longer suits our communication needs” the agency said in a statement

www.reuters.com/world/europe...
EU medicines agency quits X, moves to Bluesky
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Monday it would no longer post on X and would use rival Bluesky instead, becoming the latest organisation to quit a social media platform that some have criticised for its content.
www.reuters.com
January 27, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
We know the main reason that people don’t cycle is because they think it’s unsafe … but it appears the opposite is true, cycling makes you live longer in better health.
January 28, 2025 at 7:25 AM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
Lifetime risk of dementia after age 55 years - 42%.
Lifetime risk and projected burden of dementia - Nature Medicine
A cohort study of over 15,000 US adults found that the lifetime risk of developing dementia from ages 55 to 95 is 42%, with the highest risk in APOE ε4 carriers, women and Black adults, and projected ...
www.nature.com
January 28, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
"This is unconstitutional," I scream as the facial recognition equipped robot dogs drag me to my cell.

"This goes against everything America stands for!" I shout, as the algorithmic sentencing machine condemns me to death.

"This is not who we are!" I remind the firing squad of child soldiers
January 21, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
Mediterranean diet changes gut bacteria, boosting memory and cognition: A new @tulaneu.bsky.social study suggests the Mediterranean diet's brain-boosting benefits may work by changing the balance of bacteria in the gut. [MedSky]
Study: Mediterranean diet changes gut bacteria, boosting memory and cognition
Tulane University News and Press Releases
news.tulane.edu
January 5, 2025 at 10:47 PM
Reposted by Liz Dobson
You just gotta love London knitting. Merry Christmas all
December 23, 2024 at 1:36 PM