This week the BMJ published a debate between two researchers over the effectiveness of homeopathy in treatment of illness. Should Doctors Recommend Homeopathy? played off a 2015 Australian NHMRC report citing that homeopathy was ineffective. [ + ]

Queensland’s Labor Government released its budget, with healthcare to benefit substantially in the areas of hospital services and facilities, ambulance services, disability services and children’s and community  health in a record $14.2 billion investment in the public health sector. [ + ]

The recent study in Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene found that medical staff using mobile phones in hospitals help spread bugs through constant handling and poor cleaning habits. [ + ]

5.2.1 Ensuring that the services you provide are necessary and likely to benefit the patient. 5.2.2 Upholding the patient’s right to gain access to the necessary level of healthcare and, whenever possible, helping them to do so. 5.2.3 Supporting the transparent and equitable allocation of healthcare resources. 5.2.4 Understanding that your use of resources can affect the access other patients have to healthcare resources. [ + ]

The Senate report into residental care arrangements for young people with severe disabilities was released last month with the ultimate outcome of founding a ‘joint taskforce’ for young people living in aged care. [ + ]

Do you work with children from birth to five years? Flinders University is looking for professionals working with children in the early years to contribute to their survey in developing a national interdisciplinary educational framework for professionals working with children within this group and their families. [ + ]

Patients fasting before surgery may be doing themselves harm, according to a presentation held at the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) meeting over the weekend. [ + ]

The CSIRO believes it has found the answer to the challenge of vaccine transportation in seashells. [ + ]

VMO to Hospital Documentation Cabrini Health in Melbourne has signed up with secure cloud provider Argus to transmit clinical documents and correspondence between visiting medical officers' (VMOs) practice software and automatically upload them to the hospitals' web-based patient administration system. [ + ]

More than two million Australian adults - over 10% of the population - suffer from a sleep disorder, clinical insomnia or sleep apnea. Sleep disorders cost the Australian economy more than $5.1 billion per year. The reduction in life quality caused by sleep disorders has a further cost equivalent of $31.4 billion a year. [ + ]

Research from the UK has shown the improvement of lung function of Cystic Fibrosis patients through the use of gene therapy in a two year trial, according to The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. [ + ]

The Western Australian government has announced funding for further support of the spiraling mental health problems affecting its mining workers in plans to expand the state’s subacute mental health beds to a total of 60 by 2017. [ + ]

You may have heard that robots are the future of healthcare, but do you know about bionics (or where biology and electrical engineering meet)? Australia is doing some exciting work in medical bionics and while some of the applications are still in development, others are in clinical trials - and others are already in the market place. [ + ]

Australians suffering from focal epilepsy will soon have access to a new treatment, thanks to Melbourne’s Swinburne University. The Magnetoencephalography scanner or MEG located at the university’s Brain Imaging Centre is the only one of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, and offers patients a non-invasive method for pinpointing the centre of seizure activity in the brain. [ + ]

A chain of Sydney dental practices has been found in breach of infection control practices including cleaning and sterilisation. The Gentle Dentist clinics in Campsie and Sussex Street in Sydney’s CBD; Surry Hills and Bondi Junction are listed with Aids Council of New South Wales (ACON) as a provider of  "HIV-friendly" bulk-billed dental work. [ + ]