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[Contagious Conversations] Managing a remote TB outbreak

2026-11-0255:19

Despite Australia’s wealth and low population density, community transmission of the infection has been observed in remote Aboriginal territories. In May 2022, TB was detected on the country of the Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara people, the first outbreak in five years. Administratively the APY lands cover 100,000 km squared in South Australia, and they are closer to Alice Springs than they are to Adelaide. Important prevention and elimination work is conducted by visiting staff from th...

[IMJ On-Air] Race-neutral equations for classification of lung function

2026-10-1126:01

Spirometry reference equations are central to differentiating obstructive ventilatory defects, like asthma and bronchiectasis from restrictive ventilatory defects, like sarcoidosis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Across the population, the metrics of lung function testing fall out on a bell-curve, and a person’s predicted score if health can be determined by putting their sex, age and height into a reference equation. The shape of this bell curve does change from one population group to t...

$Ep158: Iron infusions and fracture risk. A safety signal for ferric carboxymaltose$

Ep158: Iron infusions and fracture risk. A safety signal for ferric carboxymaltose

2026-10-0101:00:32

One in twenty Australian women of reproductive age are treated with intravenous iron supplementation, almost exclusively with ferric carboxymaltose. Usually sold under the name Ferinject or also Ferricarbo and Ferivo, this formulation is well-known to reduce serum phosphate in 50 to 70% of patients taking it, recently published findings reveal that it is associated with a significant increase in fracture risk and osteomalacia. Cohort studies presented in July in the journal Blood show...

Ep157: AI models for discharge letters and clinical coding

2026-09-2236:18

In part 1 of this series we talked about the efficiency gains from use of ambient scribes observed in some hospital settings. In this episode we discuss other opportunities that arise from granting large language models access to all the notes and test results in the patient record. The potential comes most clearly into perspective in regards to discharge summaries. Discharge from hospital is a notorious example of discontinuity in care, with up to half of discharged patients experienci...

Ep156: AI scribes in hospital

2026-09-1436:51

The burden of clinical documentation is one of the top reasons given for job dissatisfaction in medicine. Physicians typically give up an hour of personal time per shift to complete paperwork and the frustration is experienced by patients too, who sometimes feel that their doctors are more focused on the computer. The promise of ambient AI scribes is that they could slash the time you spend hovering over the keyboard and in general practice some 40 percent of Australian GPs are using scribes ...

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