Data supports patients from hospital-to-home

Nanoparticles dressed to kill cancer cells

Medical tourism adds to surgery risk

Medical tourism is the practice of travelling outside one’s home country for medical or surgical treatment. According to Peter Leggat, from James Cook University, it includes dental tourism, but not wellness tourism, which usually refers to visiting spas, homeopathy treatments or traditional healing. It is a rapidly growing industry, especially in Southeast Asia, which is seeing a growth in international tourist arrivals from Australia.

5 tips for a better patient handover

Nursing handover is the primary method of sharing patient information between shifts and ensuring continuity of care from shift to shift.

The hospitals of tomorrow

Rooftop play garden at Fiona Stanley Hospital

1. Who is the play space designed for? The rooftop play garden was designed for Patients, siblings and parents alike.

In conversation with Dr Yusuke Ueno-Dewhirst

The high cost of false positives

Cancer screening has never been shown to “save lives,” argue experts

Four-strain flu vaccine a first for 2016

Influenza (flu) vaccines that provide protection against four strains of the flu virus (quadrivalent vaccines) are being introduced into the National Immunisation Program (NIP) for the first time in 2016.

How I met my son - a story of acceptance

‘The sky didn’t fall, and our family didn’t fall apart. We just started using different pronouns. Oh, I had to change the name stored in my phone with his number. That was a bit of a pain.’ – Yolanda Bogert

Harvesting stem cells with fewer side effects

For bone marrow transplantation, stem cells are routinely harvested from healthy donors and used to treat patients with cancers including leukaemia.

Boosting hospital funding and ditching blame

Once again, states and territories are mired in negotiations with the Commonwealth about public hospital funding.

Could drug subsidies end Hepatitis C?

Hepatitis C is a hidden epidemic affecting 170 million people worldwide. Thanks to new public subsidies of powerful drugs, Hepatitis C could be wiped out within a few years.

Why chocolate is the secret to happiness

According to Simon Cotton, from the University of Birmingham Money may not buy happiness or grow on trees but when it comes to chocolate, it seems you can have both. Chocolate really does grow on trees and the chemical feel-good factor comes from the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive drug.

Painless insulin delivery through nanopatch

No more finger pricking? This team of scientists have been developing a patch that sits on the skin and is capable of detecting the sugar levels in your sweat. A wearable, sweat-sensing patch that can monitor and regulate blood glucose levels is described in a paper published online this week in Nature Nanotechnology. The graphene-based patch is shown to deliver metformin, a drug used to treat diabetes, through the skin to reduce high blood glucose levels in diabetic mice.