Michael Malone – iiNet founder
iiNet co-founder and managing director Michael Malone is the epitome of the technology-based rags-to-riches success story that fuelled the Internet boom of the 1990s. Read More...
LATEST ARTICLES
June 2007
Canadian cash cow
Canadian operation www.mdBriefCase.com.au is now targeting Australian doctors, medical students and nurse practitioners with free CME activities. As elsewhere, ‘free' means financed by the pharmaceutical industry while the RACGP and ACCRM are paid to accredit. Heavy promotion is through regular email broadcasts and prizes offered to survey participants, with results used to fine tune content and provide feedback to sponsors. Its all about creating awareness around a product or service within a clinical area - educational grants generate particular content, usually from specialists, paid by mdBriefCase to write independently with "AMA standards for scientific validity, objectivity and completeness" whatever that is.
Govt fat burn fans
Aussies are fat, with 80% dying from preventable diseases. A stunning proactive move by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) has been the 4-year Australian Better Health Initiative ($250m from the feds and $24.6m from State coffers). Even the federal opposition has a new shadow minister for Sport and Recreation and Health Promotion in Senator Kate Lundy - to help people live healthy, active lives and cut the estimated $1.5 billion preventable disease bill for Oz. Wow! The public sector Australian Health Promotion Association is trumpeting support, with eyes on the new preventive health budget no doubt. They run an annual conference and publish the Health Promotion Journal of Australia to add science to what we already know.
Kalamunda curtailed
Despite earlier talk of a GP-focussed community hospital at Kalamunda, the reality is ... Read More...
Beneath the Drapes. June 2007
Long term trustee Mr Don Good has been appointed Chairman of Trustees for St John of Good Health Care, replacing Sister Isobel Moran who held the role for seven years. It may be a sign of the times that an accountant is taking over from a nun.
Still at St John of God, Ms Anna Roberts has been appointed inaugural Mental Health Program Coordinator ... Read More...
May 2007
Medical Forum's caesarean snowball
Our April feature on WA's escalating caesarean section rates has gathered a lot of media attention in the last few weeks. The story was first picked up by The West at the start of April and then reappeared on the front page after Easter, with Health Minister Jim McGinty touting a tough new policy on elective caeseareans to arrest the state's 33% c-section rate. Even TV channels picked up the story. With all this attention, it looks like the elective caesearean could be headed the way of the circumcision and no longer performed in the public system for non-medical reasons.
Masters of lying low
Perth's recently touted Masters of General Practice conference has fallen through, with rumours that lacklustre registration numbers were to blame. Flyers only reached GPs and businesses in late December, giving potential delegates less than eight weeks to get their act together. Not surprisingly, the organisers have been keeping low, but from what we hear, the conference has not been officially cancelled, merely postponed ... indefinitely.
Where's the wellness?
Where should health consumers go to attain wellness? Well, according to HBF's new Wellness cover ... Read More...
Beneath the Drapes. May 2007
RPH's head trauma surgeon Dr Sudhakar Rao has been appointed as WA"s first Director of Trauma Services. Dr Rao established WA's first registry of trauma data 12 years ago and has been instrumental in the planning of trauma services at the new Fiona Stanley Hospital.
Dr Steve Patchett, former acting Director of the WA State Forensic Mental Health Service, has been appointed as ... Read More...
Florence Nightingale’s Istanbul
The gigantic Selimiye Military Barracks in Istanbul is home to a small Florence Nightingale Museum at the very site where, as a 34-year-old, she cared for wounded soldiers during the Crimean War (1854-1860). Read More...
Health Reform Architect – Jim McGinty
He is the architect of change, the general behind the Director General, the man who would transform health in WA. As the long-serving Health Minister, the Hon Jim McGinty is pushing perhaps the most radical set of health reforms ever seen in this state. Read More...
April 2007
The birds!
Longstanding Esperance GP and Liberal MLA Dr Graham Jacobs finds himself in a challenging situation, with birds dropping out of Esperance skies, presumably from contamination from lead carbonate shipped out of Esperance harbour. The contamination appears airborne, and with a ‘no safe threshold limit' for lead in humans, fall out for his patient (now constituent) population seems inevitable. His choices might be to quietly get on with doctoring in the town or scaremongering and Labor-bashing for political advantage in his marginal seat.
Silver lining on the Gray cloud?
The pragmatic peace pipe is out at Sirtex Medical. The company announced it had been granted leave to amend its cost claim against Professor Bruce Gray, and said it had received a written undertaking from Prof Gray to refrain from directly or indirectly carrying on any business similar to, or competitive against, Sirtex's. Given the boardroom events of last year, this is a huge change. Meanwhile, Sirtex's net profit dropped to $1.6m (compared to $2.7m last period) although sales increased worldwide. The reason for the drop? Legal fees.
C3: all cashed up with nothing to sell
As we predicted in the February edition, investors are now running a mile from C3 after it downgraded its earnings forecast....
Read More...