
Translational Health Sciences
This podcast series explores the downstream phases of translational health sciences, focusing on the human, organisational, and societal issues that affect how research discoveries are adopted, disseminated, and mainstreamed into healthcare practice. It emphasizes turning innovations into practical solutions for healthcare needs, a challenge that grows more urgent as health system demands increase. Talks are drawn from the Oxford Translational Health Sciences Programme and feature leaders in translational healthcare. The series is produced by Oxford University.
Episodes

Welcome to the New Era of Digital Health: Power, Politics and the Fight for Justice in the Age of AI
This talk explores the complexities, entanglements and crossroads at which digital health as a field now lives and stands. Innovative digital technologies, such as AI, hold significant promise to further the global attainment of health and well-being. Such technologies could provide access to professional and personalized care at speed, scale and low-cost. However, in this field, the values, inter

The changing dynamics of mixed health systems in low and middle-income countries (LMIC)
Professor Kabir Sheikh discusses how social trends shape health systems in low- and middle-income countries, focusing on the complex mix of public-private, traditional-modern, and digital-nondigital axes. Health systems are social systems, and are shaped by broader trends such as urbanisation, commercialisation, the information revolution, and the post-pandemic social reordering. Against that bac

Healthcare Within a Humanitarian Crisis: Experiences from Gaza
Mr Khaled Dawas shares his recent experiences of working in Gaza as a surgeon providing emergency care. In this episode, Mr Khaled Dawas reflects on the targeting of health facilities and health workers during the conflict, the implications for medical education in Palestine and the role of global health students and practitioners world-wide.
The main lecture is delivered by Mr Dawas and will a

Politics, Innovation and Change: The Path to Net Zero
Professor Nick Watts explores net zero in the context of health care. Working at the intersection of politics, policy, industry, healthcare and academia, Professor Nick Watts will reflect on his time as Chief Sustainability Officer of the NHS, on the Lancet Commission on Sustainable Health Care, and his current role at the National University of Singapore. He will explore what net zero means in th

What kind of a problem is loneliness? Studying technology to understand policy concerns
This talk by Dr Gemma Hughes is intended to show how problems, such as loneliness, can be understood and researched in multiple ways. By outlining the methodology of the research programme Virtual Presence, and explaining the qualitative methods used to study the adoption of telepresence technologies designed to prevent loneliness, Dr Hughes will argue for the importance of interpretive approaches

Knowledge for bright ideas – how research can support innovative health systems
Guest lecturer Dr Nick Fahy is a research group director for health and wellbeing at RAND Europe, where he oversees research in such areas as health systems and healthcare innovation, and the behavioural and social determinants of health and wellbeing. Innovation is the central challenge facing health systems. The constant expansion in our ability to improve health has brought us benefits of lengt

Justice and the Egalitarian Research Imperative
In his new book, 'For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics' (Oxford University Press), Prof Alex John London argues that there is a moral imperative to carry out research with human subjects... ... and that this imperative is grounded, in part, in the relationship between the information that research produces and the purposes of a just social order.
In this talk, Prof

Using theory, evidence and person-based co-development to improve infection control during COVID-19
Until a vaccine can prevent COVID-19, protective behaviours (such as social distancing, handwashing, cleaning/disinfecting) must be used to limit the spread. Germ Defence is a digital behavioural intervention developed using mixed-methods person-based research to help people improve their home hygiene and curb the spread of COVID-19. The Germ Defence project is collaboratively conducted between t

Health Technology Assessment: Global alignment of systems, stakeholders and emerging trends
This talk will introduce and explore, the global mechanisms and initiatives that align process, strategy and methodology for Health Technology Assessment (HTA). It will introduce and explain the methods behind stakeholder involvement in HTA, with a particular focus on patient involvement. It will explore the benefits and challenges posed by increasing innovation complexity, and explore how new me

'Why would anyone hesitate to help kids with cancer?' or: understanding competing perspectives on innovations
'Homebound' students are unable to attend school for health-related reasons. To lessen their predicament, schools have begun experimenting with 'telepresence robots' for remote participation. Based on an interview study of stakeholders of the robot 'AV1' in Norway, I find that most users are highly positive about the robot's prospects for reconnecting them with their friends in school. However, I











