2025 ASM Cairns

Is ‘chatty’ Dolores AI the answer to chronic pain?

FPM Symposium presenter Dr Nicole Andrews was interviewed by Herald Sun medical editor Robyn Riley about her chatbot research.

The "Dolores" chatbot developed by Australian researchers including Dr Andrews involved 60 Australian patients who tested the chatbot’s ability to accurately guide them to manage their pain. 

The article ran online in the Herald Sun and other News Limited publications on 1 May: The Courier Mail, the Hobart Mercury, Adelaide Now, the Cairns Post, the Geelong Advertiser, Gold Coast Bulletin, Townsville Bulletin, the NT News and the Daily Telegraph reaching an audience of more than 350,000 people. 

A/Prof Mick Vagg joins call for The BMJ to retract a clinical practice guideline

More than 30 pain medicine societies are calling on The BMJ to retract a clinical practice guideline that advises against interventional procedures for chronic spine pain.

The guideline, part of the BMJ Rapid Recommendations series, recommends that procedures such as epidural injections of anaesthetic or steroids should not be offered to adults with chronic axial or radicular spine pain that is not associated with cancer or inflammatory arthropathy, outside of clinical trials.

It was based on a network meta-analysis, published in the same journal, which evaluated 81 trials covering nearly 8000 patients.

Associate Professor Michael Vagg told AusDoc (paywalled) on 24 April that he supported the calls to retract the guideline.