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I'm excited about this month's upcoming events to discuss the lessons of the changes to stroke services in London and Greater Manchester. The events will draw on the findings of the study led by Professor Naomi Fulop of UCL, which brought together a team of researchers, clinicians and service users from London and Manchester to examine the effectiveness of stroke reconfiguration.

By 8pm in most departments in most UK hospitals, the majority of people whose title implies a leadership or management role are on their way home, returning the following morning at, let’s say, 8am plus or minus one hour. ​Does this imply that for around half the average day, our great NHS hospitals are ‘un-led’?

Our systems and institutions are not strong enough to support the level of debate and discussion we need to make resilient policy. If we stopped to think about what we were doing critically, would we change course so often? Maybe we would be more likely to uncover what we don’t know.

One hundred years since the vote was first extended to women in the UK and over 140 years since women were allowed to train as doctors in Britain, do we have equality of power for women in healthcare, either as professionals or as patients?

Thank you to Kaleidoscope, who asked me to offer some reflections on joy in work. When I was thinking about this, I was reminded of a story that I’d like to share with you. It’s a story about someone you might not usually associate with joy - a homeless man.

He stands up and walks around his desk, placing a sweaty hand on my lower back as he opens the office door to indicate it is time to go. “The Oracle represents the most sophisticated healthcare algorithm ever created. Trust Her.”

It seems to me the Writing the Future science fiction prize, and the beautiful, eerie stories, mess with our minds because they say ambiguous things about the gap between the present and the future. Is this gap vast, with futures yet untold unfolding in unpredictable directions? Or is this gap porous, and shrinking?

I was told an uplifting story the other day that made me reflect about the conversations we have. Or more accurately, the conversations we don’t have, and what this might mean for our health. It was about a lady, not originally from the UK. She was coming on her own, almost every other day, to her local GP in south London – invariably without an appointment. 

As the writer of 'Burnout', one of the six stories shortlisted for Writing the Future, I've been asked to describe my experience of writing for the competition, and the inspiration behind my story. “Write what you know,” beginner authors are often advised. Well, it so happens that I work in primary care in the UK, and I enjoy reading – and occasionally writing – science fiction.

Ben Dyson, the Executive Director of Strategy at NHS Improvement, writes on the challenges of healthcare strategy in the UK, particularly the transition from traditional strategy to a more agile and adaptable model.