Your morning abstract of digital well being information, data and occasions to find out about if you wish to be “within the know”.
👇 Information
🎅 On-line pharmacy Pharmacy2U has warned that requests to NHS 111 for pressing repeat prescriptions are set to spike within the coming month, as busy festive schedules collide with seasonal stress on the NHS. Primarily based on the most recent NHSE statistics, round one in 5 (20%) enquiries made to NHS 111 on-line in 2025 are for pressing repeat prescriptions, up from only one in 15 (6.6%) three years in the past.
🔔 NHS Wales workers are urging these going through festive monetary pressure, loneliness, or emotions of grief to make use of its free on-line psychological well being assist service, SilverCloud. SilverCloud is obtainable through self-referral – with out seeing a GP – to anybody aged 16 or over coping with mild-to-moderate psychological well being points together with anxiousness, stress, melancholy and sleeplessness.
⛄A trio of UK-based teachers declare that classes from the Covid pandemic can assist ease the stress confronted by the NHS this Christmas. The consultants, writing within the BMJ, say {that a} three-pronged strategy of administering flu vaccines, boosting assist in order that in poor health folks can keep at residence, and enhancing air flow and air high quality would assist to guard folks from flu.
🎁The MHRA has launched suggestions for staying secure in terms of medicines, and medical units this Christmas. The recommendation features a warning that cranberry merchandise, together with juices and sauces, might improve the probability of bruising or bleeding in folks taking warfarin, whereas tyramine-rich meals – reminiscent of aged cheeses, cured meats and darkish chocolate – may cause issues for folks taking medicines like monoamine oxidase inhibitors, a kind of antidepressant.
🍷For many who have over-indulged this Christmas, Get a Drip clinic supply vitamin IV drips, vitamin injections and longevity therapies together with a detox drip containing antioxidants. The agency was based by Richard Chambers after he was identified with sort 1 diabetes aged 18-year-old and admitted to intensive care. After benefitting from IV dietary remedy administered in hospital and continued privately, he was impressed to arrange the enterprise.
🎄NHS information reveals that there have been greater than 200,000 A&E attendances final winter for circumstances that would have been handled elsewhere – together with 8,669 attendances for itchy pores and skin and 96,998 for a sore throat. The NHS has launched a brief movie titled “24 Hours Not In A&E” as a part of a marketing campaign to assist folks keep away from pointless visits to A&E departments and GPs.
❓ Do you know that?
Analysis from conversational AI voice companion agency Sentai, reveals that loneliness and falls the largest fears for households with aged kinfolk this Christmas. A nationwide consultant examine of two,000 Brits discovered that 65% are involved about their family members feeling lonely.
When requested to rank what worries households most, 47% of households stated that they fear most about falls, whereas 41% are most frightened of loneliness.
Paul Statham, chief govt of Sentai, stated: “Christmas is sort of synonymous with household time and being collectively however this could heighten emotions of loneliness when folks aren’t capable of be with these they care about.
“The implications of not tackling this may be detrimental. Many households need nothing greater than to assist and assist their family members however the challenges of day by day life imply that isn’t at all times so easy.
“One of many largest issues not solely mirrored in our information however within the conversations we’ve with Sentai customers is the worry of turning into a burden.
“Companionship instruments, like Sentai, imply households can preserve connection with out at all times having to be in the identical room.”
Age UK analysis, revealed on 4 December 2025, signifies that greater than one million older folks within the UK may face Christmas Day alone.
The charity’s polling of greater than 2,600 folks aged over 65 revealed 11% will eat dinner alone, whereas 5% won’t see or communicate to anybody through the day.
📖 What we’re studying
The BMJ Christmas article, revealed on 11 December 2025, examinesthe surge in folks, particularly youthful folks, turning to AI chatbots for companionship, emotional intimacy, and assist, and why this presents a priority notably round loneliness and psychological wellbeing at Christmas time.
AI chatbot methods, reminiscent of ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot, are used more and more as confidants of alternative. The article says that whereas this can be seen as a optimistic democratisation of emotional assist and care on the level of want, there may be rising concern surrounding potential psychological and social harms, notably pertaining to social isolation and loneliness.
The article warns that “we is perhaps witnessing a technology studying to kind emotional bonds with entities that lack capacities for human-like empathy, care, and relational attunement” and says that proof based mostly methods for decreasing social isolation and loneliness are paramount.
In gentle of this proof, the article says that it appears prudent to think about problematic chatbot use as a brand new environmental threat issue when assessing a affected person with psychological state disturbance.
🚨 Upcoming occasions
30 January 2025, digital occasion – NHS Digital Transformation 2025
