An exchange that reveals the truth of a review that has now become a lot like 'Weekend at Bernie's'

The ethics-approved studies to reword definitions are being overshadowed by an apparently inconsistent approach to stakeholder participation and concern in the medical sector, given its sudden inclusion in a process from which it has largely been excluded.

A subtle but significant shift in Budget practice has emerged in Canberra during Senate Estimates, with Health Department officials confirming the reallocation of $2.7 billion in mostly future-program underspends to other portfolio priorities.

The 2026 Patient's Choice Awards, presented by Patients Australia, will bring together healthcare leaders, clinicians, researchers, patient advocates, carers, policymakers and consumers from across the country for a national celebration of excellence in patient-centred care.

BioPharmaDispatch, also BPDInsights.ai, is publishing an edited version of the information provided to the unidentified participants in the second stage of the Delphi study on the definitions of 'high unmet medical need' and 'high added therapeutic value'. At least this way, those excluded can see its direction.

Recent waves of job losses across the local biopharmaceutical industry probably mask a deeper, systemic decline in Australia’s capacity to participate in the global life‑sciences ecosystem, with worrying implications for national resilience, patient access to innovation, and the country’s attractiveness as an investment destination. Are we at risk of following New Zealand in losing a strategic national capability?

Former Medicines Australia public affairs head, Gail Morgan, has been appointed as the inaugural chief executive officer of the Medicinal Cannabis Council Australia.

Omico has launched a national real-world data initiative built on Australia’s largest prospectively consented precision oncology dataset, comprising more than 20,000 records.

Blood cancers remain a major health burden in Australia. It is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death. Around 20,000 people were diagnosed with blood cancer in 2025, and more than 135,000 Australians now live with blood cancer.

According to the company, in the Phase 3 RASolute 302 trial, daraxonrasib showed a roughly 60 per cent reduction in the risk of death and a doubling of median overall survival compared with standard second-line chemotherapy.

Links sent to participate in round two of the process are uniquely coded, single-use and ring-fenced. Whose input does it reflect? Surely we have a right to know? The fact that this was entirely predictable is still no excuse for secrecy and non-transparency.

Is this the outcome people expected, not least after almost five years? It makes the sudden urgency that so many now demand very odd. Given that the current trajectory means no change for the vast majority of new therapies, why the urgency?

Powerful patient stories stand in contrast to a decision-making framework that explicitly dehumanises their lived experience. The need for 'decency and compassion'. Week one of Senate Estimates, the challenge of saying one thing publicly and something else privately, and a Budget that revealed so much about what is coming.

Alice Tien, Managing Director of Biogen Australia and New Zealand, said, “People living with ALS and those who support them have waited a long time to see meaningful progress against this devastating disease."

The increase, equivalent to roughly a 1 per cent rise in the agency’s baseline funding, means the backlog of medicines awaiting funding will remain almost entirely intact.

AusBiotech has announced a major change that will bring its three flagship conferences together as a single, connected week on the Gold Coast in October 2026.

The government’s internal inter-agency machinery does the heavy lifting before industry is invited in. That upstream process shapes, narrows and will almost certainly set the terms under which any negotiation involving the industry can take place. It still creates opportunity.

The release of the research coincides with the NSW Government's decision to expand eligibility for the free nasal spray flu vaccine to include all young people aged 2 to 17 in the state, adding to the country's immunisation 'postcode lottery'.

A single intravenous infusion of Lilly's investigational base editor VERVE‑102 produced dose-dependent reductions in PCSK9 of up to 88 per cent and LDL cholesterol of up to 62 per cent, with effects sustained for up to 18 months.

The commercial leaders discussed the market access and health technology assessment challenge in Australia, focusing on how attitudes of these decision-making executives have evolved in response to changing reimbursement, policy and system pressures

Australians living with an early pre-symptomatic stage of type 1 diabetes can now be treated with the first approved non-insulin medicine that slows the immune attack that leads to symptomatic disease.