My colleague and friend Howard Nicholson, who has died aged 102, was a chest physician, an inspirational diagnostician and a teacher.
After the second world war, as a consultant at two London hospitals – University College (UCH) and the Brompton – Howard began to run patient treatment meetings on what we would now call multidisciplinary lines. Treatment decisions were made jointly by physicians, surgeons and radiologists, with physiotherapists and social workers also contributing. Joint care planning is now taken for granted, but it was pioneering at the time and Howard was instrumental in getting it off the ground.