Archive for month: November, 2017

By Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, Grattan Institute, and Christine Jorm,
Associate professor, University of Sydney

Australia’s health system is an information industry – it is awash with data. Tragically, though, the data is not well collated, not put into the hands of the people responsible for acting on it. Nor is it shared with patients. Multiple “data sets” measure the safety of hospital care in Australia, but they are rarely linked, sometimes incomplete, and almost always delayed. We have lots of data about hospital safety, but it’s not used to make us safer when we have to go to hospital. Read more

The Government is to spend $35 million from the Research Future Fund (MRFF) to back Australian companies and entrepreneurs to make medical discoveries. Read more

Australia’s health ministers must put people’s health first and resist pressure to water down codeine safety measures, an alliance of medical, pharmacy and consumer organisations has urged.

“We are concerned that some state and territory health ministers may bow to pressure from some pharmacy owners and seek to overturn in their states the decision supported by the Federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt, to make codeine available only after consultation with their GP,” a joint statement from the RACP, painaustralia, RDAA, RACGP, CHF and SHPA said. Read more