Uncertainty around the medicolegal aspects of AI-assisted care is of the main reasons that practitioners report discomfort about the use of this technology. It's a question that hasn’t been well tested in the courts but there is evidence about the types of adverse events that result.

In early 2022 Victorian physicians saw a cluster of patients presenting with fevers, confusion and Parkinsonian symptoms. These would be identified as the first cases of Japanese encephalitis virus acquired on Australia’s mainland in 24 years.

The inexplainability of deep learning models creates discomfort for some clinicians and regulators. But AI-based clinical interventions can still be tested to the standards of evidence-based medicine we are accustomed to.

AI-assisted medicine can help overcome some of the natural limits of human cognition. But it all depends on how seamlessly the machine learning devices fit in with decision-making in the clinical workflow.

Artificial intelligence can help interpretation of diagnostic images and perform very nuanced risk stratification based on medical records. But machine learning algorithms must be trained on good quality data to avoid error and bias from being introduced.

There is systematic variation in delivery of care to culturally diverse patients in all fields of medicine. This podcast highlights the subtle biases that affect clinical decision-making by practitioners and provision of services at an institutional level.

In 2022 a sexually transmitted form of mpox virus made its way around the developed world but it had long been endemic in African countries. In this podcast we talk about the conditions that allowed new strains to evolve and the rapid community health response that reigned the global outbreak in.

The field known as Practice Analytics seeks to provide clinicians with a bird’s eye view of their case load and performance. This can draw attention to cases that stood out from the trend and help reflection and practice improvement.

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, international studies showed that pre-existing diabetes conferred a significant mortality risk. Researchers have retrospectively examined electronic medical records in two Melbourne health services to find no such association.

New research from an Australian hospital puts the early readmission rate among cirrhotic patients well above international comparisons. A fifth of these readmissions might be preventable with better adherence to guidelines.