Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation

AI is playing an increasingly important role in the advancement of healthcare, with Australia's health scene taking slow but steady steps to leverage this powerful new technology. In 2021, the Australian Alliance for AI in Healthcare published a roadmap to provide guidance on how industry could leverage AI to be resilient and deliver safe, cost-effective healthcare to Australians. That roadmap has since been updated , and a panel discussion at the Digital Health Festival (DHF) touched on what the way forward looks like. The road ahead "At the moment, there's not enough knowledge in digital health to begin with in AI, specifically in healthcare settings. And so the recommendations in the roadmap are around assisting professional bodies to really develop codes of practice and eventually do some training as well," said Karin Vespoor, professor and e xecutive dean of the School of Computing Technologies at RMIT University. She added that Australians need support in understanding the implications of the use of AI in the context of their care, and also be able to make decisions around the use of AI in their care. "In the solutions space, want to support the development of local AI companies to become globally competitive. And we really need to think about something that we call algorithmic sovereignty – having the ability to develop technology here in Australia so that we can mitigate some of the risks associated with foreign services. "For instance, sending our very sensitive healthcare data overseas. We need to retain some amount of local capability in order to use these tools effectively." Ensuring the careful adoption of AI Andrew Pearce, VP of Analytics and Global Advisory Lead at HIMSS, drew the conversation to how large vendors like Epic were embedding AI into their products – and whether they would be leading the charge in the safe adoption of AI. "I think the most important thing is when [smaller vendors] are doing this we have a high frequency of update releases which enable us to enact a lot of change [versus] dropping a huge change that has been in development for many years," said Kai Van Lieshout, founder of Lyrebird Health. "The problem is where do you get that data about the indigenous consults and the slight biases – you're not going to get it in a 'sandbox' environment as I like to call it. "It's so critical that these tools are built out in real time in slow and steady increments [but] with deep collaboration with community and practitioners for it to be safe." Prof Vespoor added: "If we have systems that are based on Epic's data – mostly data where models have been trained to understand the language of US electronic healthcare systems – and we try to take them and just plonk them into Australia, we're going to find important differences in things like local documentation practices, local drugs lists, and medication lists." She went on to say that these differences might not seem like a big deal but when you're building a large AI system that has integrated and synthesised all this information, the small differences start to add up. "The ability to focus in on finely constrained problems is something we can really only do in the context of a smaller company that is willing to invest in understanding the particular details and context [of that health system's jurisdiction.]" Exemplars around the world Regarding countries Australia can learn from, Dr Stefan Harrer, program director at CSIRO's Data 61, explained that there is no one country that has figured it all out and doing it perfectly. He shared: "The US has the 21st Century Cures Act which essentially [lays] the foundation around access to data and managing the patient data ecosystem that is underneath all of this. "I would say it's a very advanced and an incubator for innovation, where we see a lot of trial and error, where we see a lot of exploration around using AI, and connecting it to those data streams. That's something that although is not AI in itself, has something that is a little bit of a make and break criteria of whether you are successful in building your AI systems and whether you have your data management, electronic health record management organised in an efficient, interoperable, scalable way." On the regulation side of things, Dr Harrer pointed to Europe, saying that the European Union's AI Act is a forward-thinking piece of legislation governing AI. The legislation seeks not to regulate the technology but regulates AI as part of specific use cases and application scenarios, rates these based on a risk framework, and then investigates how these risks can be mitigated and managed. "Can we learn from all of them? We should work with all of them. I think we should talk to all of them. We have a lot to offer in Australia as well when it comes to safe exploration and an advanced healthcare system that's eager to explore this technology. "I think it's a give and take. An environment where we all can learn from each other. And this is also the most important thing. We all need to talk to each other, right? And no one has invented the right way yet. But we all together, I think, can get there if we see and check what we do right and also what we do wrong."

Captured by cutting-edge radio telescope technology, a chance reactivation of a magnetar -- the Universe's most powerful magnets -- has revealed an unexpectedly complex environment. Researchers using Murriyang, CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope, have detected unusual radio pulses from a previously dormant star with a powerful magnetic field. ​New results published today in Nature Astronomy describe radio signals from magnetar XTE J1810-197 behaving in complex ways. ​Magnetars are a type of neutron star and the strongest magnets in the Universe. At roughly 8,000 light years away, this magnetar is also the closest known to Earth. ​Most are known to emit polarised light, though the light this magnetar is emitting is circularly polarised, where the light appears to spiral as it moves through space. ​Dr Marcus Lower, a postdoctoral fellow at Australia's national science agency -- CSIRO, led the latest research and said the results are unexpected and totally unprecedented. ​"Unlike the radio signals we've seen from other magnetars, this one is emitting enormous amounts of rapidly changing circular polarisation. We had never seen anything like this before," Dr Lower said. ​Dr Manisha Caleb from the University of Sydney and co-author on the study said studying magnetars offers insights into the physics of intense magnetic fields and the environments these create. ​"The signals emitted from this magnetar imply that interactions at the surface of the star are more complex than previous theoretical explanations." ​Detecting radio pulses from magnetars is already extremely rare: XTE J1810-197 is one of only a handful known to produce them. ​While it's not certain why this magnetar is behaving so differently, the team has an idea. ​"Our results suggest there is a superheated plasma above the magnetar's magnetic pole, which is acting like a polarising filter," Dr Lower said. ​"How exactly the plasma is doing this is still to be determined." ​XTE J1810-197 was first observed to emit radio signals in 2003. Then it went silent for well over a decade. The signals were again detected by the University of Manchester's 76-m Lovell telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in 2018 and quickly followed up by Murriyang, which has been crucial to observing the magnetar's radio emissions ever since. ​The 64-m diameter telescope on Wiradjuri Country is equipped with a cutting edge ultra-wide bandwidth receiver. The receiver was designed by CSIRO engineers who are world leaders in developing technologies for radio astronomy applications. ​The receiver allows for more precise measurements of celestial objects, especially magnetars, as it is highly sensitive to changes in brightness and polarisation across a broad range of radio frequencies. ​Studies of magnetars such as these provide insights into a range of extreme and unusual phenomena, such as plasma dynamics, bursts of X-rays and gamma-rays, and potentially fast radio bursts.

Astronomers have measured the speed of fast-moving jets in space, crucial to star formation and the distribution of elements needed for life. The jets of matter, expelled by stars deemed 'cosmic cannibals', were measured to travel at over one-third of the speed of light -- thanks to a groundbreaking new experiment. For the first time, astronomers have measured the speed of fast-moving jets in space, crucial to star formation and the distribution of elements needed for life. The jets of matter, expelled by stars deemed 'cosmic cannibals', were measured to travel at over one-third of the speed of light -- thanks to a groundbreaking new experiment published in Nature today. The study sheds new light on these violent processes, making clever use of runaway nuclear explosions on the surface of stars. Co-Author Jakob van den Eijnden, Warwick Prize Fellow at the Department of Physics, University of Warwick, said: "The explosions occurred on neutron stars, which are incredibly dense and notorious for their enormous gravitational pull that makes them swallow gas from their surroundings -- a gravitational pull that is only surpassed by black holes. "The material, mostly hydrogen from a nearby star that orbits around, swirls towards the collapsed star, falling like snow across its surface. As more and more material rains down, the gravitational field compresses it until a runaway nuclear explosion is initiated. This explosion impacts the jets, that are also shot out from the infalling material and eject particles into space at very high speed." The team devised a way of measuring the speed and properties of the jets by comparing X-ray and radio signals picked up by the Australia Telescope Compact Array (owned and operated by CSIRO, Australia's national science agency) and the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Integral satellite. Co-Author Thomas Russell, National Institute for Astrophysics, INAF, Palermo, Italy, said: "This gave us a perfect experiment. We had a very brief short-lived impulse of extra material that gets shot into the jet and that we can track as it moves down the jet to learn about its speed." Jakob van den Eijnden added: "These explosion occur every couple of hours, but you can't predict exactly when they will happen. So you have to stare at the telescope observations for a long time, and hope you catch a couple of bursts. Over three days of observations we saw 10 explosions and jets lighting up." The jets travelled around 114,000 kilometres per second, an incredible 35-40% the speed of light. This was the first time astronomers had been able to anticipate and directly watch how a certain amount of gas got channelled into a jet and accelerated into space. Co-Author Nathalie Degenaar, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, continued: "Based on previous data, we thought the explosion would destroy the location where the jet was being launched. But we saw exactly the opposite: a strong input into the jet rather than a disruption." The researchers believe the mass and rotation of neutron stars and black holes also impacts the jets. Having now shown this research is possible, this study will form the blueprint for future experiments into neutron stars and their jets. Jets can also be produced by cataclysmic events such as supernova explosions and gamma-ray bursts. The new results will have wide applicability in many studies of the cosmos.