• EXCLUSIVE

Scientists are edging closer to a tablet that can mimic some of the effects of exercise. But don't start slacking off just yet - testing on humans is still at least five years away.

How well did Australians score on our national report card?

The wave of gastroenteritis outbreaks that affected hundreds of thousands of Australians over winter were caused by not one but three new highly contagious norovirus strains, UNSW researchers found.

It's a promising step into a post-antibiotic world.

One woman has died and several people are said to be unwell after what a family member said was an outbreak of gastroenteritis on a cruise ship off the coast of Queensland.

Did you know that the venom of a carnivorous sea snail can send an unsuspecting fish into a sugar coma? That's weird for a start, right? But get this: snail venom might also be behind the next generation of ultra-fast-acting insulin for diabetics.

Pharmaceutical companies have spent $12 million paying nurses for their advice and educating them in recent years despite only a few being able to prescribe drugs.

One of Australia's largest health insurers, Bupa, is examining thousands of rejected claims over the past five years due to an error in its system.

Misleading reports warning patients off taking their statins have exaggerated their harms and underestimated their benefits, say the researchers of a major review.

NSW Ambulance has hidden from public view Facebook comments by a former paramedic who responded to a woman's cry for help and criticised his old employer on an RUOK post.

Babies delivered by C-section were 64 per cent more likely to grow up to be obese than were their brothers and sisters delivered vaginally.

Australia should follow the US example and ban some antibacterial chemicals from everyday soaps as they could be causing serious health problems, scientists say.

A Canberra anaesthetist has been banned from practising medical research for a year.

NSW hospitals have been hit by a "tsunami" of sicker patients in greater numbers, the state's peak medical body warns.

Over-diagnosis of a common thyroid cancer is causing unnecessary surgeries that is putting patients at risk, Australian researchers say.

The parents of the newborn girl injured in a nitrous oxide gassing in hospital have spoken about the catastrophic error.

How much money did your doctor get from big pharma?

A psychiatrist who was jailed for indecently assaulting four women he was treating can apply to return to practicing medicine in five years.

Too many Australian doctors are splitting their time between public and private hospitals, undermining efficiency and potentially contributing to delays for patients, a health system expert says.

The mother of a woman who died during a cosmetic procedure in Mexico wants her other daughter to return home from her year-long mission of retribution.

Three years after NDIS trials began, failures in the full national rollout over the last two months has led the federal government to promise an independent complaints system and new agreement on quality and standards.

In the patient handover meeting, he was listed as "unknown male", a young man whose body had been ejected from a car in a high speed accident.

The patient had been raped. Her fallopian tubes had to be taken because he'd given her gonorrhoea. And with them had gone her dream of becoming a mother.

• EXCLUSIVE

For one Sydney family the news that a stillborn baby had been mistakenly cremated left them with a visceral sense of deja vu. They had lived through it three years earlier.

Dozens of Australians have been infected with the Zika virus this year and there are concerns more will contract it while travelling in Asia where cases are proliferating.

The president of IVF's peak body says that there is little taxpayer value in subsidising treatment after a woman turns 45.

Drug companies have paid Australian doctors and nurses more than $64 million since April 2015 to attend "educational events", advisory group meetings and to act as consultants.

Medicinal cannabis will become legalised, but strictly controlled, from November this year, under a formal decision reached by the Therapeutic Goods Administration this week.

​The first drug to combat Alzheimer's disease is on the horizon after scientists proved they can halt mental decline by clearing the sticky plaques from the brain that cause dementia.