#Harefield

[dubmill]

Harefield Church, Hillingdon, London; 2.9.2023

[hillingdontoday]

New Affordable Family Homes Completed in Harefield

Council completes six new family-sized social homes in Harefield featuring sustainable technology and accessible housing. Read more on Hillingdon Today. https://hillingdontoday.co.uk/new-affordable-family-homes-completed-in-harefield/ #Hillingdon #HillingdonCouncil #Harefield #WestLondon #LondonHomes #AffordableHousing #SocialHousing #NewHomes #HousingDevelopment #FamilyHomes #PropertyNews #UKHousing #HousingForAll #CouncilHousing #SustainableLiving #EcoHomes #EnergyEfficientHomes #GreenEnergy #SustainableHousing #AirSourceHeatPumps #EVCharging #EcoFriendly #AccessibleHousing #WheelchairAccessible #InclusiveLiving #DisabilityHousing #AdaptedHomes #CommunityDevelopment #BetterLiving #UKCouncils #UrbanRegeneration #BuildingCommunities Read the full article

[someonetotalktosworld]

Platform for Anxiety Counselling in Yiewsley

Someone To Talk To offers a compassionate platform for anxiety counselling in Yiewsley. Our professional therapists provide a safe space to explore your feelings, develop coping strategies, and regain control of your well-being.

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

Photography: Disco Inferno, Harefield Road 12/4/24

Photography: Disco Inferno, Harefield Road 12/4/24

The other night, I was at Our Wicked Lady for The New Colossus Festival’s Holiday Party, which featured Glimmer, Mahogany and Retail Drugs. After the showcase, Kanine Records label head and New Colossus Festival co-founder Lio Kanine, along with Steven Matrick, Kepler Events founder, Dedstrange Records co-founder and New Colossus Festival co-founder, a couple of Kanine’s pals and myself wound up…

[krautjunker]

The Harefield Chase

[reasonsforhope]

When Swiss cardiologist Thomas F. Lüscher attended an international symposium in Turin, Italy, last summer, he encountered an unusual “attendee:” Suzanne, Chat GPT’s medical “assistant.” Suzanne’s developers were eager to demonstrate to the specialists how well their medical chatbot worked, and they asked the cardiologists to test her. 

An Italian cardiology professor told the chatbot about the case of a 27-year-old patient who was taken to his clinic in unstable condition. The patient had a massive fever and drastically increased inflammation markers. Without hesitation, Suzanne diagnosed adult-onset Still’s disease. “I almost fell off my chair because she was right,” Lüscher remembers. “This is a very rare autoinflammatory disease that even seasoned cardiologists don’t always consider.”

Lüscher — director of research, education and development and consultant cardiologist at the Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospital Trust and Imperial College London and director of the Center for Molecular Cardiology at the University of Zürich, Switzerland — is convinced that artificial intelligence is making cardiovascular medicine more accurate and effective. “AI is not only the future, but it is already here,” he says. “AI and machine learning are particularly accurate in image analysis, and imaging plays an outsize role in cardiology. AI is able to see what we don’t see. That’s impressive.” 

At the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, for instance, his team relies on AI to calculate the volume of heart chambers in MRIs, an indication of heart health. “If you calculate this manually, you need about half an hour,” Lüscher says. “AI does it in a second.” 

AI-Assisted Medicine

Few patients are aware of how significantly AI is already determining their health care. The Washington Post tracks the start of the boom of artificial intelligence in health care to 2018. That’s when the Food and Drug Administration approved the IDx-DR, the first independent AI-based diagnostic tool, which is used to screen for diabetic retinopathy. Today, according to the Post, the FDA has approved nearly 700 artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled medical devices.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is considered the worldwide leader in implementing AI for cardiovascular care, not least because it can train its algorithms with the (anonymized) data of more than seven million electrocardiograms (ECG). “Every time a patient undergoes an ECG, various algorithms that are based on AI show us on the screen which diagnoses to consider and which further tests are recommended,” says Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Cardiovascular Health Clinic. “The AI takes into account all the factors known about the patient, whether his potassium is high, etc. For example, we have an AI-based program that calculates the biological age of a person. If the person in front of me is [calculated to have a biological age] 10 years older than his birth age, I can probe further. Are there stressors that burden him?”

Examples where AI makes a sizable difference at the Mayo Clinic include screening ECGs to detect specific heart diseases, such as ventricular dysfunction or atrial fibrillation, earlier and more reliably than the human eye. These conditions are best treated early, but without AI, the symptoms are largely invisible in ECGs until later, when they have already progressed further...

Antioniades’ team at the University of Oxford’s Radcliffe Department of Medicine analyzed data from over 250,000 patients who underwent cardiac CT scans in eight British hospitals. “Eighty-two percent of the patients who presented with chest pain had CT scans that came back as completely normal and were sent home because doctors saw no indication for a heart disease,” Antioniades says. “Yet two-thirds of them had an increased risk to suffer a heart attack within the next 10 years.” In a world-first pilot, his team developed an AI tool that detects inflammatory changes in the fatty tissues surrounding the arteries. These changes are not visible to the human eye. But after training on thousands of CT scans, AI learned to detect them and predict the risk of heart attacks. “We had a phase where specialists read the scans and we compared their diagnosis with the AI’s,” Antioniades explains. “AI was always right.” These results led to doctors changing the treatment plans for hundreds of patients. “The key is that we can treat the inflammatory changes early and prevent heart attacks,” according to Antioniades. 

The British National Health Service (NHS) has approved the AI tool, and it is now used in five public hospitals. “We hope that it will soon be used everywhere because it can help prevent thousands of heart attacks every year,” Antioniades says. A startup at Oxford University offers a service that enables other clinics to send their CT scans in for analysis with Oxford’s AI tool.

Similarly, physician-scientists at the Smidt Heart Institute and the Division of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles use AI to analyze echograms. They created an algorithm that can effectively identify and distinguish between two life-threatening heart conditions that are easy to overlook: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and cardiac amyloidosis. “These two heart conditions are challenging for even expert cardiologists to accurately identify, and so patients often go on for years to decades before receiving a correct diagnosis,” David Ouyang, cardiologist at the Smidt Heart Institute, said in a press release. “This is a machine-beats-man situation. AI makes the sonographer work faster and more efficiently, and it doesn’t change the patient experience. It’s a triple win.”

Current Issues with AI Medicine

However, using artificial intelligence in clinical settings has disadvantages, too. “Suzanne has no empathy,” Lüscher says about his experience with Chat GPT. “Her responses have to be verified by a doctor. She even says that after every diagnosis, and has to, for legal reasons.”

Also, an algorithm is only as accurate as the information with which it was trained. Lüscher and his team cured an AI tool of a massive deficit: Women’s risk for heart attacks wasn’t reliably evaluated because the AI had mainly been fed with data from male patients. “For women, heart attacks are more often fatal than for men,” Lüscher says. “Women also usually come to the clinic later. All these factors have implications.” Therefore, his team developed a more realistic AI prognosis that improves the treatment of female patients. “We adapted it with machine learning and it now works for women and men,” Lüscher explains. “You have to make sure the cohorts are large enough and have been evaluated independently so that the algorithms work for different groups of patients and in different countries.” His team made the improved algorithm available online so other hospitals can use it too...

[Lopez-Jimenez at the Mayo Clinic] tells his colleagues and patients that the reliability of AI tools currently lies at 75 to 93 percent, depending on the specific diagnosis. “Compare that with a mammogram that detects breast tumors with an accuracy of 85 percent,” Lopez-Jimenez says. “But because it’s AI, people expect 100 percent. That simply does not exist in medicine.”

And of course, another challenge is that few people have the resources and good fortune to become patients at the world’s most renowned clinics with state-of-the-art technology.

What Comes Next

“One of my main goals is to make this technology available to millions,” Lopez-Jimenez says. He mentions that Mayo is trying out high-tech stethoscopes to interpret heart signals with AI. “The idea is that a doctor in the Global South can use it to diagnose cardiac insufficiency,” Lopez-Jimenez explains. “It is already being tested in Nigeria, the country with the highest rate of genetic cardiac insufficiency in Africa. The results are impressively accurate.” 

The Mayo Clinic is also working with doctors in Brazil to diagnose Chagas disease with the help of AI reliably and early. “New technology is always more expensive at the beginning,” Lopez-Jimenez cautions, “but in a few years, AI will be everywhere and it will make diagnostics cheaper and more accurate.”

And the Children’s National Hospital in Washington developed a portable AI device that is currently being tested to screen children in Uganda for rheumatic heart disease, which kills about 400,000 people a year worldwide. The new tool reportedly has an accuracy of 90 percent. 

Both Lopez-Jimenez and Lüscher are confident that AI tools will continue to improve. “One advantage is that a computer can analyze images at 6 a.m. just as systematically as after midnight,” Lüscher points out. “A computer doesn’t get tired or have a bad day, whereas sometimes radiologists overlook significant symptoms. AI learns something and never forgets it.”

-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, March 1, 2024. Headers added by me.

--

Note:

Okay, so I'm definitely not saying that everything with AI medicine will go right, and there won't be any major issues. That's definitely not the case (the article talks about some of those issues). But regulation around medicines is generally pretty tight, and

And if it goes right, this could be HUGE for disabled people, chronically ill people, and people with any of the unfortunately many marginalizations that make doctors less likely to listen.

This could shave years off of the time it takes people to get the right diagnosis. It could get answers for so many people struggling with unknown diseases and chronic illness. If we compensate correctly, it could significantly reduce the role of bias in medicine. It could also make testing so much faster.

(There's a bunch of other articles about all of the ways that AI diagnoses are proving more sensitive and more accurate than doctors. This really is the sort of thing that AI is actually good at - data evaluation and science, not art and writing.)

This decade really is, for many different reasons, the beginning of the next revolution in medicine. Luckily, medicine is mostly pretty well-regulated - and of course that means very long testing phases. I think we'll begin to really see the fruits of this revolution in the next 10 to 15 years.

[wongmsrailgallery]

Sunday 6 April 2025 - Standard gauge R766 leads 'The Picnic Train' out of Junee with diesel 42101 on the rear, bound for a day of shuttles out of Wagga Wagga. Plus 172 more new photos in the The Picnic Train - Wagga Wagga shuttles 2025, Bomen, Pacific National - Main South freight, Harefield, Junee Railway Workshops, Junee, Pacific National Griffith freight, Junee Buses, Wagga Wagga, Australian Defence Force buses, Uranquinty, Kapooka, Busabout Wagga Wagga, Qube Logistics interstate steel trains, Qube Logistics Port Botany-Bomen freight, Ladysmith Tourist Railway and Tumbarumba to Rosewood rail trail albums https://railgallery.wongm.com/page/archive/2025-04-06/

[anti-the-poet]

She said, "Help me to weave together permanent memories from temporary feelings; Let the warmth of a hug linger a little longer than the soreness of a bruise. Grant me one more dream of Harefield in the summertime, And let this mother wound, Dance, Diminish, And die, Alone in my womb."

Part 1/2 - Antigonie M. Woods | @anti-the-poet

[guerrerense]

4497 @ Junee por Bingley Hall Por Flickr: Former New South Wales Government Railways 44 class 4497, now with private operator QUBE 4497, between duties at Junee, NSW, on 30 September 2022. 4497 is/was the last operational non-preserved Alco DL500B in the World and at the time was used fairly regularly on QUBE Logistics' intermodal shuttles between Junee and Harefield. Changes in that operation in late 2022 were thought to be be likely to spell the end for the aging 4497, but it managed to survive in services to at least August 2023. 80D_1_11_0171

[charitylink]

New starter Clare was donated some dog food by an elderly person at Uxbridge Christmas Market.. She took it upon herself to hand deliver it to Dogs Trust Harefield, who gladly received it as pictured here with a Dogs Trust team member.

Incredible demonstration of going the extra mile from this wonderful new fundraiser!

Dogs Trust

[the-girl-from-dres]

Here's a nice list of very British sounding town names and other places from a website about cement kilns.

It also happens to contain the local gravational acceleration in Newtons per Kilogramme because that's apparently an important thing for cement kilns

Aberthaw 9.8119

Arlesey 9.8123

Ballyconnell 9.8136

Barnstone 9.8131

Barrington 9.8125

Barton 9.8138

Beddington 9.8117

Bevans 9.8118

Billingham 9.8146

Burham 9.8117

Cauldon 9.8131

Chinnor 9.8118

Cliffe 9.8118

Coltness 9.8154

Cookstown 9.8141

Crosfield's 9.8137

Crown & Quarry 9.8118

Derrylin 9.8136

Drogheda 9.8141

Dunbar 9.8158

Dunstable 9.8120

Ellesmere Port 9.8137

Gillingham 9.8118

Harbury 9.8124

Harefield 9.8119

Holborough 9.8117

Hope 9.8134

Humber 9.8138

Jarrow 9.8152

Johnsons 9.8118

Kent 9.8118

Ketton 9.8129

Kinnegad 9.8130

Kirtlington 9.8121

Kirton Lindsey 9.8136

Lewes 9.8112

Limerick 9.8130

Lyme Regis 9.8114

Magheramorne 9.8149

Martin Earles 9.8118

Masons 9.8125

Metropolitan 9.8119

Mitcheldean 9.8119

Newhaven 9.8112

Norman 9.8125

Northfleet 9.8118

Oxford 9.8121

Padeswood 9.8134

Penarth 9.8119

Peters 9.8117

Pitstone 9.8120

Platin 9.8136

Plymstock 9.8111

Premier 9.8125

Rhoose 9.8119

Ribblesdale 9.8140

Rochester 9.8117

Rodmell 9.8112

Rugby 9.8126

Shoreham 9.8112

Sittingbourne 9.8118

South Ferriby 9.8138

Southam 9.8125

Stockton 9.8125

Stoneferry 9.8138

Sundon 9.8121

Swanscombe 9.8118

Tunstead 9.8132

Vectis 9.8111

Warren 9.8147

Weardale 9.8141

West Kent 9.8117

West Thurrock 9.8118

Westbury 9.8115

Whitehaven 9.8147

Widnes 9.8137

Wilmington 9.8138

Wishaw 9.8155

Wouldham 9.8118

anytime someone from the UK orders a print from me I’m delighted because the addresses tend to be charming and sound completely made-up, I just suspend my disbelief and accept that I’m sending a package someplace with a name like Bristleberry House at Ditchmallow in Brambleford-on-Cotton—incredible lmaooo I bet this gets delivered to you by a badger in a little coat

[hillingdontoday]

Eight Men Charged Following Spate of Burglaries Across West London and Beyond

Eight men charged following coordinated police operation across Uxbridge, Ruislip, Hayes, Northolt, Greenford and Acton. Read more on Hillingdon Today. https://hillingdontoday.co.uk/eight-men-charged-following-spate-of-burglaries-across-west-london-and-beyond/ #Uxbridge #Harefield #Ruislip #Hayes #Northolt #Greenford #Acton #Feltham #Essex #Burglary #CrimeNews #UKCrime #CourtNews #InCustody #WestLondonNews #LondonCrime #LocalNews Read the full article

[someonetotalktosworld]

Hillingdon Talking Therapies Service

At Someone To Talk To, we provide compassionate and professional talking therapies in Hillingdon, supporting mental well-being through counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and mindfulness techniques. Our experienced therapists help individuals manage stress, anxiety, and depression, offering a safe and confidential space for healing and personal growth.

[literaturereviewhelp]

The Nature of Nursing Total Number of Words: 3,000 Table of Contents I. Introduction ……………………………………………………….. 3 II. Basic Aspect of Nursing Knowledge ……………………………… 4 a. Organization of Care: Personal Hygiene and Infection Control ………………….………………………. 4 III. Skill Mix …………………………………………………………… 8 a. Nursing Skills in Respiratory Ward ………………………. 8 b. General Knowledge ………………………………………... 8 c. Attitude …………………………………………………….. 10 d. Importance of Combining the Skills, Knowledge, and Attitude ……………………………………………….. 11 IV. King’s Goal Attainment Theory (Nursing Model) ………………… 11 V. The Contribution of Nursing Theorists on Personal Hygiene and Infection Control ………………………………………………….. 12 VI. Conclusion …………………………………………………………. 13 Appendix I - King’s Goal Attainment Theory ……………………………. 14 References ………………………………………………………………….. 16 - 19 Introduction Respiratory diseases is one of the major challenge in the health care service. For many years, asthma and tuberculosis has been the leading causes of disability and premature death within the United Kingdom. (Royal Brompton and Harefield, 2007) According to the British Thoracic Society (BTS), roughly more than 70,000 British individuals die from respiratory diseases such as emphysema, bronchitis, and asthma annually. Despite the high incidence of death among the patients suffering from respitarory diseases, it is unfortunately that the British government and the National Health Services (NHS) focuses more on cancer and heart diseases only. (Derbyshire and Fleming, 2005) Patients with respiratory diseases such as occupational and environmental lung diseases, fibrosing lung diseases, chronic lung infections, cystic fibrosis, and acute respiratory failure among others often experience difficulty in breathing and sleeping disorders. Within the respiratory wards, nurses plays a critical role in providing a good delivery of health care services to patients and minimizing the spread of contagious diseases through proper hand washing technique. Concerning the handling of respiratory care for patients, each nurse should be knowledgeable not only with the basic health care provision for patients with respiratory diseases or illnesses but also the ethical principles and legality of the nursing practice in order to avoid facing legal charges from these patients. This study will discuss about the basic aspect of nursing knowledge particularly in the organization of care in personal hygiene and infection control within the respiratory ward. The necessary skill mix of nurses working in the respiratory ward particularly the importance behind a combined skills, knowledge, and attitude (SKAs) in the nursing profession will be noted. Upon analyzing the importance of personal hygiene and infection control, the author will incorporate the King’s Goal Attainment Theory model in explaining why it is necessary to provide the patients with proper personal hygiene particularly the need for hand washing and implement infection control measures within the respiratory ward. The study will also mention some of the contribution of several nursing theorists such as Martha Rogers (1950s); Virginia Henderson (1966); Rosemarie Parse (1992); Nightingale (1969); Roper et al. (1980s); and Orem (1980) in personal hygiene and infection control within the respiratory ward. Basic Aspect of Nursing Knowledge Organization of Care: Personal Hygiene and Infection Control Personal hygiene refers to the physical act of cleaning the body to ensure that hair, skin, oral, and nails are in good condition and free from infection. (DOH, 2001) The maintenance of an acceptable level of cleanliness is part of promoting comfort, safety, and the well being of the patient. (Young, 1991) It is in fact the most basic human right that all nurses should give to the patients. One of the key aspects of personal hygiene is hand washing Read the full article

[therealglobetrekker]

Restaurant Review: The Coy Carp, Harefield UK

[lmxledrailuk]

Founded in 2013, LMXLED has been at the forefront of providing energy-efficient lighting solutions, specialising in high-quality T8 and T5 Rail Compliant LED Tubes. With over a decade of experience, we are committed to delivering sustainable and cost-effective lighting products that meet the stringent safety and performance standards required for the rail industry.