35. Could One Scan Save Your Life? Dr Zane Sherif on Preventive Medicine & Imaging

We’re back for Season 3 of It Takes Heart and kicking things off with an offsite recording at MBR Health on the Gold Coast, is guest Dr Zane Sherif, renowned Radiologist and founder of MBR Health.

Dr Zane brings deep insight into proactive screening, using preventive health and whole body MRI to shift modern medicine from crisis to care. He shares how MBR Health is using state-of-the-art medical imaging and software innovation to detect disease earlier and offer patients a clearer path to longevity. We explore the rising need for personal screening and the growing impact of precision diagnostics in empowering people to take charge of their health, before symptoms appear.

This episode is for anyone curious about the future of healthcare, early detection, or ready to take a more proactive approach to their health.

Dr Zane’s organisation of choice is Médecins Sans Frontières, an independent international medical humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, healthcare exclusion and natural or man-made disasters.

It Takes Heart is hosted by cmr’s Samantha Miklos and Kate Coomber and recorded at cmr’s head office in Brisbane.

We Care; Music by Waveney Yasso

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Transcript

Guest Introduction

Sam Miklos 0:00

What if one scan could save your life? In our first episode of season three of It Takes Heart, we sat down with founder and radiologist Dr. Zane Sherif to talk about longevity and preventative health.

Dr Zane Sherif 0:12

He sold his business. He was 55, and he was like, okay, I've sacrificed my health to get the money. Now I need to put the money back into my health. And I thought that was pretty logical. So he went to his GP and he said, I want to get a whole body MRI. And so we went interstate, came and got his scan, and he got had pancreatic cancer. But the earliest version of pancreatic cancer, and in the best location for pancreatic cancer, which was in the tail of the pancreas, which is literally just chop it off and put it in the bin.

Sam Miklos 0:40

In this episode, we explore how full-body MRIs are not only saving lives, but giving people incredible peace of mind.

Kate Coomber 0:48

Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. And follow us on Instagram to help grow our community.

Sam Miklos 0:58

So today we're excited to be launching season three of It Takes Heart in a little bit of a different way. We are down here with Dr. Zane Sherif at the Gold Coast at MBR Health. We are very excited to meet with you today. Zane has got quite a following online with celebrities, high performance athletes. I think Chris Hemsworth has even been here having these radiology scans done. I've been fortunate enough to have my own experience here at MBR Health, and I'm looking forward to diving into that today. Zane, thank you for joining us today when it takes heart.

Dr Zane Sherif 1:30

Thank you. Yeah, so um, I mean, look, the traditional path of undergrad and then a couple of years in the wilderness trying to pad up your CV and then getting onto radiology training. I finished that at the PA hospital in 2013.

Sam Miklos 1:52

Was radiology always going to be your specialty?

Why Radiology Drives Diagnosis

Dr Zane Sherif 1:55

Look, it was not. Right. So because my father's a radiologist, my uncle's a radiologist, my cousin's a radiologist. Um so there are a lot of radiologists in the family, and I wanted to paddle my own canoe, so I took a more scenic route. Yeah. Um, in that I did uh Gen Med, Gen Surge, orthopedics, um, and then I went, damn it. That was right. And then I went in and I I transferred over to radiology and I did radiology. So um, yeah, so that's so 2003, finished my fellowship at Gold Coast University Hospital and um and have been working in and around the Gold Coast ever since. So I worked for first job out was with Loomis, five years, uh, five-year contract, and look, that was great. It was collegiate, lots of uh more senior radiologists around me, kind of nurturing me because I was very, you know, finished at that point, book smart, but still needed a lot of experience. Got that experience in that five years, went to Q scan for a short period of time, and really we were getting kind of close to COVID, and then I was just like, I think radiology could be done so much better. And I call it comfortably numb. So you're in this job, you're making an okay salary, you don't really have to think or want for anything better. So therefore, your brain isn't really kind of going into um how you can push things because again, you're comfortably numb, things are working, bills are getting paid. Yeah, you know, so and I kind of was getting a little bit dissatisfied with that, and I just wanted something better. So myself and the wife, uh Kiri thought, you know, maybe we should, you know, we've got enough experience now, a bit of a reputation, maybe we should look at doing something ourselves. And beach radiology was born.

Sam Miklos 3:29

Is she a radiologist as well?

Dr Zane Sherif 3:30

She's a doctor of philosophy, so she's uh she's a PhD in engineering. Yeah, um, she's a smart one in the duo. Um, but um, yeah, so that was just before COVID. Obviously, we didn't know COVID was coming.

Kate Coomber 3:41

Yeah.

Dr Zane Sherif 3:42

So we set up MBR and then COVID.

Kate Coomber 3:44

So if we pause COVID for a second, I guess what was the vision?

unknown 3:48

Yeah.

Dr Zane Sherif 3:51

Yeah. So if you look at the diagnostic pie, um, like blood tests, seeing a doctor, a specialist, radiology, pathology, etc. So if you look at that diagnostic pie, a WHO paper from 2019 looked at it themselves and they said that the diagnostic pie, radiology, was 80% of that diagnostic pie on average. The reality is good radiology could be 90, 95% of that diagnostic pie. Um, because most diseases, we don't have a biomarker. That means there's no blood test for it. Um it's heavily reliant on radiology. But because that back to that comfortably numb people just doing it the same way they've always done it, no one's really pushing the envelope. Um there was just a there was just a bit of lack of innovation in a larger corporate um scenario. So making MBR or forming MBR allowed me to drive it um and drive that innovation and do the fun stuff. I mean, that is the fun stuff for me.

Kate Coomber 4:47

What were the gaps? Like what were you uh what were you really focused on first?

Dr Zane Sherif 4:51

So um we bought Australia's first um spectral CT. So that's you've got conventional CT, then it went to dual energy CT, and the next iteration is uh spectral CT. The next iteration on that again is a thing called photon counting CT, which are a couple in Australia. Photon counting, I won't bore you, photon counting is the ultimate spectral, so it's based on a spectral um kind of workflow. But what that means is um so we were the first to to get that into private practice, and it's a giant leap in um in diagnostics, in image quality, radiation dose. We can reduce the radiation dose on average by about 50%. We can reduce the contrast volume. Um, there are tests that we do, normally it would be 120 mils of contrast, we can do that with 30 or 20 mils of contrast. So people with bad kidneys or allergies um don't have a problem getting those scans now. So we bought that. It was a very steep learning curve because we didn't know what it could do over a regular CT, and over that period of time we've been finding out it's amazing for obviously for oncology, for breast implant, um, for just so many more things that that we haven't been able to, even saying what a kind of a kidney stone is made of, um, for gout, for all these extra things that a general CT would struggle. And then once we worked out what it could do, then we were really just pushing uh getting bigger reductions in um in contrast, bigger reductions in uh in um study dose, etc. So it was a very steep learning learning curve.

Sam Miklos 6:15

And what about um for your MRI machines? Are they and they different to what else is in MRI?

Dr Zane Sherif 6:21

Yeah, so physically it's the same. The the thing that sets um that makes the biggest difference is we have a thing called clinical science tools. And clinical science tools is like the unlock of an MRI scanner. So most scanners are shipped commercially, they've got the safeties on. So that means you can't accidentally push it too far and blow up a gradient amplifier or blow something up. With the clinical science tools, and again I'm dumbing down the explanation, but it gives us a lot more tools.

Speaker 4 6:46

But please do. Yeah, wrong with that.

Dr Zane Sherif 6:48

But essentially it takes off all the safeties. It allows uh the MRI scientist Ben Kennedy and the rest of the team to really push it to the nth degree, and we can just get so much more out of it. So physically they're the same, there's 3T and so on, but that's software. So the magic is really on the software end. The hardware is quite similar.

Kate Coomber 7:05

And because when you're saying pushing it, pushing it in terms of the results that you could see, not pushing it in terms of the patient uh concerns, you know. Yeah, like that.

Longevity Framework And The Eight Pillars

Dr Zane Sherif 7:15

Correct, yeah. So I mean for the patient, there's there's no difference. Um it's you lie there uh after a period of time, you might feel a bit of increased heat. Um, but so there's no real difference from a patient perspective. All the all the differences are really on the software side, the image quality side. Um but yeah, that's uh that's the main thing.

Sam Miklos 7:30

So when we met, um I remember you talked about like these diagnostic tools are being like one pillar in the longevity conversation. Yeah. And you know, we can be pumping ourselves to with a whole bunch of you know herbal medicines and all sorts of things, but then if there's something going on, we're kind of missing the point. Talk to me about that.

Dr Zane Sherif 7:49

All right, so I'm I call them the eight pillars. And I'm never gonna remember each one, so I've written it down.

Sam Miklos 7:56

I know there was four, so go.

Dr Zane Sherif 7:58

And this is in any particular order, but the out of the eight pillars, I'm only good for about two of them. The rest are kind of it's on you.

Speaker 4 8:04

Yeah.

Dr Zane Sherif 8:05

So I'll talk about one, my ones first. So whole body MRI is so life to to get to to get to old age, um, it's it's a lot of things. But the ones that you can kind of really drill down and control is the surveillance. So life right now is a game of whack-a-mole. We have so many um challenges right now, I think more than any other generation. I mean, pollution, microplastics, hyper vaccination, you name it, there are so many things and genetics and genetics that are getting expressed now, not in your 50s and 60s and 70s, they're getting expressed now in your 30s and 40s. So if you've got a faulty gene, um some environmental trigger is gonna draw that out, and then you're gonna have a cancer that should have normally developed at 60 or 70, and you might know that history from your parents or grandparents, it's now coming out in your 30s or in your 40s. So the MRI is how we play that game of of life whack-a-mole. So as these threats come up, um, your MRI is the whack-a-mole, it identifies the whack-a-mole, and you've got to hit them on the head, and hopefully, you've found stage one, stage two disease really, really early, and then you can address it because that's your best chance of cure.

Sam Miklos 9:10

Because that's the point of difference, right? Is that typically we wait for the blood test or the symptoms and by the time where then where they're going and reacting.

Dr Zane Sherif 9:17

Where it's like, correct, exactly. Look, medicine really up until recently has been very much a reactive game. It's only with the the advent of these new technologies that we've got to say, okay, well now we don't have to wait to get sick. Um we don't have to wait to fall off the cliff. We can now be the guardrails on the top of the cliff instead of trying to mend you back together at the bottom of the cliff. So medicine is fundamentally changing to proactive. And look, there are, and that's not just me. I mean, uh as of July this year, the the government released the national um lung cancer screening, um, and that's for 50 to 70 year olds who have a big history of smoking. Uh, we've obviously got bowel cancer screening, we've got mammography screening. So we know that screening works. Look, it's not the perfect tool, um, but it's our tool, and it's still of great utility, and we know that screening does save lives. This is a the reason whole body MRI would never fit those definitions is because it's too expensive to because all those screenings is about deploying it to a population. You could never have 28 million Australians going and have a whole body MRI. It's it's almost an impossible task. The cost is astronomical. So this is personal screening. Yeah. It's not it's not yeah, population-based screening.

Sam Miklos 10:24

So then, in terms of our longevity, so we've got surveillance, surveillance.

Dr Zane Sherif 10:27

Oh, let me read my list. Okay. Go through your list. Sorry.

Sam Miklos 10:29

Well, we might need some screening for those young 20-year-olds on the vape soon. We'll have to bring that that down.

Dr Zane Sherif 10:35

It's a big concern. That is a big concern. So, yeah, so close surveillance, so the whack-a-mole, but you, you know, the the hammer is your MRI. Um, the next thing is maintain and restore. So maintain and restore function, things like arthritis, um, bad backs, all that kind of thing. We can now with uh with orthobiologics, so that's orthobiologics umbrella term for things like platelets, stem cells, growth factors, all that stuff in the plasma. So that orthobiologics now is really having a major um is having a major uh treatment uh response in um in bad knees, bad backs, bad ankles and hips and so on. So we will as we work it out more, and there's good level one papers now saying that it is the way to to treat these arthritides, um, we'll be able to salvage most joints. Wow. Um and we'll be able to help a lot of backs without fusion surgery. Well, we're not fully there yet, but it's certainly new treatments that are gaining a lot of traction. So that's and that helps part of the maintain and restore. Um we've said close surveillance. And the other things, then I've said optimized nutrition, so that's basically optimized nutrition, try and have a macrobiotic diet, uh, reduce your toxin intake.

Kate Coomber 11:41

Can we just also add in there though, when you talk about that, that's also feels like a minefield because that feels very obvious to you of what the nutrition should be. But I think that that feels like a minefield of what are we supposed to be eating? Correct. What are we supposed to be doing? Who is right? What this plan, that plan, everything contradicts each other. How is anyone to know what how to do that right? If that's a key pillar to longevity.

Who Should Get Scanned And When

Dr Zane Sherif 12:03

Correct. The longer an ingredient list is on the packet, the worse it is. So keep it simple. Keep it simple, because all that is extra processing and extra additives, and it's nearly an impossibility. And plus the writing is so small, I can't read it. I've got to take a photo and zoom it in. And that's all by design. And if it's got E and numbers in it, then you know it's just an unnatural product. So I mean, you're right, optimized nutrition. That's I I'm oversimplifying. That's a hard one. That's a real hard one. But it's not just about optimizing nutrition, it's also keeping the stuff out. So, you know, all of I mean, there's recent publications about uh blueberries and how it's full of pesticides and herbicides and all that kind of thing. I mean, how do you get rid of these? These are all waterproof so they don't wash off every time it rains. So the only way to get rid of it, it's a 15-minute soak in bicarb. It's the only way to get rid of it. Um, and certainly for my kids, that's all the berries are all soaked in in bicarb for 15 minutes. Um, yeah, it gets a little bit mushy, but if you get it at the right time, it's okay. Yeah. So there's a bit of an art to that. Um, the gut biome, you know, all of these all of these things affect the gut biome, and we know now that the gut biome is our third immune system. Um so having that as healthy as possible is really important. Reducing risk factors of disease. I mean, that's that's probably the most obvious one, but I mean, risk factor of smoking, vaping, you know, taking anything, any bad toxin, um, drugs, etc. Adequate sleep is a real one that just isn't given enough tension. People almost brag. What is adequate sleep? Yeah, look, it's it's eight, it's a minimum of eight hours. Um, but right now we're we're so busy, uh everything is doing this price-wise. Um, people have to work less, second jobs, etc. I mean, it's an easy thing to say if you've got if you can afford it. Yeah. But but yeah, sleep is a big one.

Kate Coomber 13:40

And everything you've just said there with cost of living, hiking, second job, that then comes stress and worry, which then impacts the problem.

Dr Zane Sherif 13:47

And that was I was gonna say at the time. Stress mitigation was an excellent, and social connection and societal contribution. Um, if you kind of if you're let's just say you're super wealthy and you're not really doing much, I mean, then the depression comes and the isolation and so on. So you've really got to have that societal contribution and society and so and societal uh connections. So they're important things. So connection. Um and we've got plenty of rat studies that show that. Um I mean uh the the famous one there is with two rats, um, they put a rat by itself and they they laced the uh the water with, I can't remember, some addictive opiate, and it was just constantly drugged out. And then when they had a second rat uh in the box as a companion, um it didn't touch the there was water and there was the lace water with the uh morphine or whatever it was, it didn't touch the morphine. So it had that, it had the buddy, yeah, so it wasn't alone and it didn't uh it didn't take the addictive water. So we've got plenty of So we've got plenty of studies that show those connections are important. Um but back to that adequate sleep, the reason that it's kind of sounds obvious, but is like everything needs to rest because it's when we rest we regenerate. So if your if your neurons are constantly firing and those neurotransmitters are getting consumed, like it needs to there has to be an off switch. It needs to be an off to regenerate and to to recalibrate. If it's constantly firing or you're only getting four hours of sleep a night, I mean you're on a pathway to you know some sort of dementia. Yeah.

Sam Miklos 15:14

So let's talk about then um the experience then coming in to MBI Health. So there's three packages that that you can come in in terms of the scanning, and and I'd had the whole body MRI, which was four scans, had MRI, body composition, osteoporosis line, bone density. Bone density, and then the CT test CT.

Dr Zane Sherif 15:37

Correct.

Sam Miklos 15:38

So let's talk about then, I guess, if if someone's doing that the same level of testing that I had done, what's not being covered that that they would need to then go and do in addition to what I had done?

Dr Zane Sherif 15:50

Okay. So what what age are you now? Am I allowed to ask it?

Sam Miklos 15:53

Yeah, you can because obviously I look first.

Dr Zane Sherif 15:55

I was gonna say 21, 26.

Sam Miklos 15:56

Close, close, close, but it it's 43.

Dr Zane Sherif 15:58

Okay. All right, so you're a spring chicken.

Sam Miklos 16:01

So I'm halfway, I'm over halfway there, I feel. I feel like I'm on the downward.

Dr Zane Sherif 16:06

Yeah, no, you're you're very much on the up. Yeah. But um, so the package that you got, look, I think at your at your age, that's that's more than enough. And I just want to qualify that CT that you had, that is a super, super low dose. We call it an ultra-low dose CT chest. Um that is roughly the same radiation dose as an X-ray. So it's that lower dose. And we took years to develop it. And the reason we developed it is because as good as MRI is, MRI needs blood, flesh, fat, etc., to give a signal. Um, it's so it's not good with air. So an air-filled organ like the lungs, MRI is actually not that great. So that's why we do the CT, it gives me the architecture. So I can see if you've got bronchitis, bronchiectasis, um, emphysema, etc., and then those small nodules, I just cannot see the small nodules. I can see nodules in MRI, but not the small ones. Um they're the small ones, which made everybody's got small nodules, it's like a freckle. Yeah, but some with some of those nodules, every cancer started from a nodule.

Speaker 4 17:05

Right.

Dr Zane Sherif 17:05

It didn't start at a 10 centimeter or five centimeter cancer, it started small. So we just put them on the radar and we can track it. So um, so that's an important one. The the ones the next package up gets a little bit more granular on a lot of the vascular stuff. So we start looking at the um sorry, you also get a calcium score. Yes, yes. Yes, you also got a calcium score that's actually in that low dose X-ray, so it wasn't even a separate. We can pull out a calcium score from that super low. So imagine for the same dose as an X-ray, I can tell you whether you've got small pulmonary nodules, lung cancer, mediastinopathy, your calcium score, um, maybe something in the in your thoracic um vertebra, slip disc, uh it even covers the um the thyroid. Um so it covers basically every organ from there to there in your chest. Whereas um an X-ray is two projections, front and sideways, it's a 150-year-old test. The only thing we're using from 150 years is the wheel. So it's a pretty, pretty blunt instrument. And for the same radiation dose, I can answer so much more.

Sam Miklos 18:07

And what we said, sorry, so I'm 43. What age do you think someone should start doing these tests and how frequently?

Dr Zane Sherif 18:15

So, so we I mean this whole thing, we're we're not out to sell somebody a product that doesn't need it. So we've kind of set limits. Yeah. So we've gone 35 to 65. After 65, remember cancer risk increases with age. So after 65, you I kind of want you to have more detailed testing. So we we do offer another one after 65, but it's a lot more detailed because again, your risk of cancer is increasing. Your risk is pretty low at a at a younger age. So, in fact, even below 35, you have to convince me that you need the test. So you might say, you know, I've got everybody in my family has this condition at 30, then I'll say, okay, well, let's do it. But generally speaking, it's confined to 35 to 65. At 70, you're kind of getting to longevity without my help. So you've kind of got good genetics. You you don't need my help.

Kate Coomber 19:04

And at 35, is that the age where you're seeing things can shift?

Dr Zane Sherif 19:08

Yeah, and and the ABC had a great um show by Dr. Swan, their in-house uh doctor, and he showed, uh, I think it was a couple months ago, he showed that cancer rates in particular have gone up in certain demographics in certain ages, hundreds of percent. And one of the biggest ones was pancreatic cancer.

Sam Miklos 19:23

Why?

Dr Zane Sherif 19:24

Why do we think it's it's again back to that whole combination it's a multi multitude of things. It's a combination of natural aging, uh, genetics, um, and all the environmental. Um, yeah, lifestyle correct, environmental triggers. Yeah. So your genetics loads the gun and environmental exposure pulls the trigger.

unknown 19:41

Right.

Dr Zane Sherif 19:41

Is the way I think about it. Um so yeah, I mean it's it's always different for different people.

Kate Coomber 19:46

And I guess to talk to your experience, actually coming in here, we've had a little bit of a look around again today, like it's it looks beautiful, it looks calm, it doesn't feel um stressful or scary or anything like that for people coming in. Do you find I don't know whether you can speak to your own experience, like nervous, sort of like what am I gonna find out? Like there must be Yeah, I probably I must I felt a little I was not a little you would do it, so I was like, I'll do it.

Sam Miklos 20:13

But I I felt a little nervous, but I was actually more um I was more excited because I think I've always been somewhat I didn't actually know this technology existed until until you had seen a post, I think, on Instagram, I think it might have been with Chris Emsworth. And I had always said for years, imagine if we could get a test every single year and we could pre-screen, like literally what you were doing. I used to say, like, that would be incredible, like the impact that would have. So when you'd said that, I was like, I can't wait. Like the mental load of knowing all those things that I need to worry about. And I think when I looked at the list, I was like, great, I'm not gonna wear this, this, this, this, this. That was fabulous. So for me, I felt like, and I knew I had always I always had a regular blood test, so I knew that it wasn't gonna be anything too hectic that came up, but I was I was more excited to see the results.

Kate Coomber 20:57

And so coming in, how long, how long is someone coming in for? What's what's the experience like? The experience is pretty good.

Sam Miklos 21:04

Like I I I think I was here for two and a half hours. You had to have the bow prepped, so I came in feeling very thin and fabulous. I was um uneated since the day before, but I was given my little pyjamas and I walked around it. My um MRI, I think was just under two hours. I was able to watch a movie that I would never have been able to watch with my husband and my kids, so that was fabulous. You have to stay completely still. Like you said, for two hours. You you probably would have freaked it. I loved it.

Dr Zane Sherif 21:30

I was in the It's a hundred minutes, but yes, the the stiller you are, the better. Yeah. And yeah, it's because we run so many sequences, and as long as you are anatomically in the same position, if I see something on one, I can go put a localizer on that and I can see it line up and see what so if there's any movement, I go, or is that in the pancreas or is it in the kidney, or is it a lymph node just outside? So the stiller you are, the better the diagnostic results.

Kate Coomber 21:55

And compared to an MRI that you might have as a reaction. To maybe some symptoms or something through a typical Yeah, so um a reactive type scan.

Dr Zane Sherif 22:06

So a reactive type scan, let's just say we pick something up in the in the pancreas, then we spend all our time obviously on that one organ. We run contrast through it, uh we do uh slightly uh finer cuts through it, um, and we gate it as you uh breathe. Because the problem with the diaphragm, I'm obsessed with the pancreas, you are gonna find out. But because it's the hardest, it's one of the smallest organs, um, and it's the hardest positioned organ, it's right under the diaphragm. And the problem with any organ under the diaphragm, it moves every time you breathe. Yeah, and just above the diaphragm is what? Is your heart. So you've got this massive ball pulsating, moving up and down. So you can imagine to get a good look at the pancreas, it's a hard thing. In the test that you had, we look at the pancreas with CT. We look at it, so that's that low dose C T actually covers the pancreas. It doesn't give us a great thing. It gives us it gives us some uh insights into it. The MRI, um, there's a separate ultrasound. So generally speaking, if you went for the top package, we'll say, Um, then we're we're kind of looking at the ultrasound four different ways. So it's but it's a really and the reason I'm obsessed with the pancreas is because it's uh it's a divil of a of a an organ when it goes bad. Even if you catch it early, it's still a problem. Yeah. Ask Steve Jobs. Um, but he um I mean he his story was he went for a kidney stone and they found pancreatic cancer, and unfortunately he took that, he took that early medical advice to his vitaminologist or whoever, and they kind of went down a wrong path. But anyway, but um so it's a tragic loss. But um, but yeah, he caught it early, but he caught it early and then didn't do the, I suppose, the right thing. But that's easy to say in hindsight. Back to your question about what else or what was different. The next package up just focuses more on a lot of the vascular stuff, which we is more age-dependent as well. So a lot of that atherosclerosis, which is aging of the vessels, that doesn't really, um, especially in females, isn't really a huge issue at 43. But at 53 and 63, it does become a bit more prevalent. So I would say by the time you get to 50, you might want to kind of get that extravascular, uh, those extravascular insights.

GP Resistance, Incidental Findings, And Value

Sam Miklos 24:09

So if we talk about then the results from my time, what what are the things we've scanned, checked from my package that we've rolled out that's I'm gonna go, wow, if I did that, I'm gonna know all of these things.

Dr Zane Sherif 24:21

Yeah, so your package pretty much had the MRI from from vertex to your ankles or to your feet. The only thing it didn't do separately was the breast. That is its own um product, if you like, or its own scan. Um, I still get a look at it. Yes. Um, and if there's something pretty big there, I'm gonna see it. But we were never about late finding late stage. Where our whole shtick is about finding early disease. So, yes, we'll get a look at it. And again, you won't thank me if I pick a five centimetre monster in there. You you want to know the five millimeter monster. So that's where a dedicated breast MRI will uncover that.

Sam Miklos 24:57

And so it's cancer, the MRI would show cancer.

Dr Zane Sherif 24:59

Correct.

Sam Miklos 25:00

What about things like MS or Correct?

Dr Zane Sherif 25:02

Yeah, it'll show all of that.

Sam Miklos 25:03

Yeah, any other, any other neural look, it'll show atrophies.

Dr Zane Sherif 25:07

So we do uh so in so the the brain that we cover in the whole body MRI, it's a pretty comprehensive brain. We do a lot of quantitative imaging, and what that means is we're measuring the substructures in the brain. Yeah. And we know from experience now that um as we get older, there's there's a natural shrinkage of the brain, but as we are going down a dementia pathway, that that it becomes an asymmetrical atrophy, and some substructures of the brain uh shrink at a higher rate than the rest of the brain, and we can track all of that. So that's called neuroquant or quantitative uh MRI brain imaging, and that's part of the brain that we do. So even though it's a brain is part of a whole body, it's a pretty comprehensive brain in its in and of itself.

Sam Miklos 25:49

If you were um if someone was about to have an aneurysm, did those sorts of things show up in that level?

Dr Zane Sherif 25:54

Absolutely, yeah. No, we do a special sequence called a time of flight, and that gives us beautiful 3D pictures of um of the circulavillus, which is your arterial um circuit in the brain, and we see if there's an aneurysm there, like uh to the same level as a dedicated scan.

Sam Miklos 26:08

Yeah, and which is phenomenal. So sorry, what are you gonna say? No, I was just gonna say my hold of what should be doing. Yeah, is this like an annual scan?

Dr Zane Sherif 26:16

Is this so there's no there's no hard and fast rule. I I think an annual is probably the best because it's an easy thing to remember. You go, oh, I'm due for my whatever. If you said it, if you had it 18 months, then you go that's a hard one to time at time. And then if you go two years, well, you know, the confidence drops per day after that scan. Like your your kind of cancer-free confidence drops every second after you've just had your scan. Yeah, I guess. So it's a long time.

Kate Coomber 26:42

Correct.

Dr Zane Sherif 26:43

It obviously depends on whether there was something there to watch or correct. And we know we've had I've had plenty of people who've actually had cancers develop within a year. Even though they've had a normal scan. Uh six months I had a uh uh a gentleman who um had his scan and then six months later got in contact with us and said, Hey, I've got this lump um in my groin. And I was like, okay, let's let's work it up. And uh sure enough, it was it was cancer that had developed within six months. Six months. Yeah. He was he was outside the I think he was in his sixties, but um he was certainly at the edge of where we would just do this as part of screening, and then we're into a bit more detailed, again, just with that cancer risk increasing with age.

Sam Miklos 27:24

And what about then I also had a body composition test? What is that?

Dr Zane Sherif 27:28

Yeah, so that that yeah, so that really kind of maps out where the good fat and the bad, like your visceral fat, which is your toxic fat, and then your subcutaneous fat, um, and where it's distributed and the evenness of it and so on. And if you're making change to diet or I might give that to my PT.

Sam Miklos 27:44

Exactly.

Dr Zane Sherif 27:47

Exactly. So it just shows all of that, it even matched your muscle volumes and shows asymmetry. So, and the beauty of the one that we've got in particular is that um it's such a low radiation dose. In fact, it's roughly 85%, sorry, 85 times lower radiation dose than a standard DEXA, to the point where the tech who does the scan doesn't have to leave the room.

Sam Miklos 28:09

I found that a little bit strange. Yeah, she just sat there and we did that, and then we did the biodensity, I believe, in the same room.

Dr Zane Sherif 28:16

There's almost negligible radiation. Well, what does that mean? That means you can, like if you're making any major changes in your life, whether it's diet working out, etc., you have to wait three months to step on the scale. And you can almost go weekly. If you if you're if you're motivated by the results and you want to see those results, you know, then you can just do this scan. You can always do it once a week. There's all virtually negligible radiation dose in it.

Sam Miklos 28:37

And then finally the CT scan, then what did we cover in the CT scan?

System Impact And Cost Realities

Dr Zane Sherif 28:42

We can cross off the yeah, so we gave you a calcium score. Yeah. And a calcium score is a measure of how much, if you've got plaque disease, if it's calcified, now there is non-calcified plaque, and that is a problem in itself. That's thankfully not that common. But there are people who form plaques, they don't calcify, which means they would score a zero and they'd think everything is hunky-dory. But if there's a sufficient family history or something, and then we we we may not be that reliant on that test because we know it's an imperfect test, but it's a useful test. And I wish Shane Warren had that test, and maybe he did, I I just don't know. But the first the first sign of heart disease shouldn't be a death event. Yeah. You know, there are ways to actually look and see what your what your risk for a cardiovascular disease is. Yeah.

Kate Coomber 29:26

Downstairs, it's very set up as well for children, the looks of it.

Dr Zane Sherif 29:30

The whole clinic, like when myself and and Kiri were designing the clinic, it was very much what would our kids want to do here? What machines why was that important? Um, we're very family oriented. Um, everybody in the clinic is. Um, and anytime somebody's kid is sick, they bring the kid in and the kid sits in the playroom or wherever. Um, we've just designed it to be very kid-friendly because we love kids and we've got four kids, which is crazy.

Kate Coomber 29:56

But are you doing pediatric scanning?

Dr Zane Sherif 29:58

We do do pediatric scanning. I don't do a lot of that. I sent I send it out to a sub-specialist pediatrician, sorry, pediatric radiologist who will report that. We don't do a lot, I mean, we're actually quite set up for it because we've got the entertainment and the MRI and we do a lot of kids.

Speaker 4 30:11

Yeah.

Dr Zane Sherif 30:11

Um, but we haven't really put ourselves out there for it, but we're more than capable of doing it. We just again it's just it just adds to friendliness to the place.

Kate Coomber 30:19

Yeah, yeah, it definitely does. Can you maybe share some stories or or some experiences of people, you know, obviously not identified, but of really positive outcomes or where you've really had a huge impact, where you've gone, do you know what? We're on the right track. This is why we're doing what we're doing.

Dr Zane Sherif 30:36

Back to the pancreas. Yeah. So there was a chap who um who recently sold his business and um did by I don't know what whatever the number was, and good on him, he's worked hard. But anyway, he sold his business. He was 55, and he was like, Okay, I've sacrificed my health to get the money. Now I need to put the money back into my health. And I thought that was pretty logical. So he went to his GP and he said, I want to get a whole body MRI and so on. So he sat in the uh GP office who and uh because I called the GP and he said, Oh yeah, I fought that guy for half an hour not to get the scan. I said, Well, aren't you glad that he overruled you? Because he came up and he got his, he flew in interstate, came and got his scan, and he got had pancreatic cancer. But the earliest version of pancreatic cancer, and in the best location for pancreatic cancer, which was in the tail of the pancreas, which is literally just chop it off and put it in the bin. When you get pancreatic cancer, even if it's early, if it's in the head of the pancreas, it is a divil. And the reason is because it's the most complex anatomy at the head. You've got bulducts, veins, arteries, nerves, lymph nodes, it's plumbed into the small bowel. So you can't just chop that out. It is a major replumbing of your of your body. Whereas in the tail, it's just snip in the bin, move on with your life.

Sam Miklos 31:53

So you just said that if the GP fought him for 30 minutes about why not to get the scam.

Dr Zane Sherif 31:59

Yeah.

Sam Miklos 32:00

Why is that? Why is that? And is are you seeing a lot of resistance?

Quality Standards In A Wild‑West Market

Dr Zane Sherif 32:04

Absolutely. It's a new paradigm of it's a new paradigm of thinking. I like I don't blame the GP. He he didn't know enough about the test. Um, look, the the usual talking points for this test, against it, sorry, are incidental owners, um, you know, its cost. I think, first of all, if you took the barriers away for this scan, what are the barriers? Time and money. Okay. Let's just say the scan took a second and it was free. Would you do it? Everyone would do it. So the only things that are the barrier to this, the barrier to entry, is the time and the money. So if you take away that, the information from the scan, is it useful? Absolutely. Even in your case now, um, we have got an incredible baseline. Let's just say there was something on your scan, and I couldn't exactly say what it was. I grade every finding, right? From basically one through five. And that's not me, that's on co-rads. It's a proper internationally recognized um lexicon of reporting. And so I grade every finding. The ones, the twos, you never think about. The three needs a bit more, and the four and the five means you've almost certainly got cancer. So therefore, the ones to really look out for are the gradings of three, four, five. Ones and twos, move on with your life.

Sam Miklos 33:10

Just to clarify for my mother, if I wasn't listening, is that I mum, I'm all ones and twos, I'm all good.

Dr Zane Sherif 33:17

So what that means is, so yes, I can't necessarily tell you what everything is without taking a piece and putting under the microscope, but it's not demonstrating any um scary imaging findings. So I I I give it a I give it a low score. And when you get this next year, now I've got a year's data, that thing hasn't moved in a year, so a longitudinal test. Okay, okay, well, now it's really effectively the as harmful as a freckle. And then the third one, well, there it is. So incidental findings are an issue for the elderly. So if I took an eight-year-old and I scanned them for the first time, literally for the first time, I will find hundreds of things wrong with sorry, I will find hundreds of things in that in that scan that will not be life-ending. One of them maybe, right? But the rest of them will not be. But I'm kind of at that point obligated to kind of go down that rabbit hole for each one. Yeah, exactly. And do they need to know it? Which is why we don't sell this after 65. This is not for you. You you got to longevity without my help. So I do not advocate for this test for anybody over the age of 65. So that's the main talking point why people are against this, saying they're always taking the octogenarian, the eight-year-old, and saying all the things you're going to find there, but I'm not pitching this at an 80-year-old.

unknown 34:33

Yeah.

Dr Zane Sherif 34:33

You know? So that whole argument is really an argument for the elderly, the incidental, what they call the incidental owners. It's an argument for the elderly. It's not an argument for the young. You barely a young person will barely have any incidentals. And the few that you do have, now we will just catalogue them over time and put them, put them to bed.

Kate Coomber 34:52

So, more generally, do you find the medical profession quite supported?

Small, Slow Medicine And Legacy

Dr Zane Sherif 34:57

Not really. No. No. Look, it's it's it is a slow burn for sure. It is a slow burn for sure. Um, but it is, I think, really. I mean, I know the college even released a position statement a few days ago. And it look, I have to say, it was a little on the disappointing side because it was the same talking points, you know, incidental OMAS and I really what people should be thinking, and I haven't heard anyone talk about this yet, is they're they're talking about the false positives. The false positive is a gift. What that means is we found something, but it's not a cancer. So it's a false positive.

Kate Coomber 35:26

You see, all that.

Dr Zane Sherif 35:28

Yeah, exactly. It may need exploration, correct. May need exploration, may not, right? So it's a false positive. That means we we've kind of found it, but it it's not necessarily it's not anything serious. The thing that you should be focused on is the false negative. That means something there that the scan wasn't sophisticated enough to find. That's where the deficient test is is that bucket of false negatives, that's where your cancer may live, and that's the deficiency. And yes, we back to your earlier statement that like the scan took two hours. It's actually a hundred, it's a hundred minutes. There's a little bit of setup to get you comfortable and get your movie and music and headphones and so on. Exactly. But it's actual scan time. Yeah, scan time's a hundred minutes. Now everybody says, Oh, we can do it an hour. Anyone can do a faster scan, you just scan less. Yes. But this is a radiologist-driven scan. I'm I'm in and out, wet reading, see if I can rob people to like if I see something, I'll say, okay, let's devote a little bit more time to that. So this is a completely different product to those B2B scans that are popping up everywhere. This is radiologist-run. We we only do this in small numbers, it's boutique, and I'm I'm involved in every step of it.

Sam Miklos 36:33

So it's a very good new wanted you to be like to do the shorter version. Like I was like, I'm in here, like you just keep going until you attack. Similarly, I want that piece of mind.

Dr Zane Sherif 36:42

But it's like anybody can do a shittier job. I don't know if you might have to edit that out. But it's hard to do a better job.

Kate Coomber 36:48

Yeah.

Dr Zane Sherif 36:49

Doing a better job takes more time, more money. It's harder to do a better job.

Kate Coomber 36:52

And I think just what you said then around you're actually there standing there going, okay, we've seen this, let's actually dive in closer over here. Because I think traditionally, if you go for a scan, you're scanned, you move on, you get your test results later, or what have you. There was no live moment of let's go further right now.

Dr Zane Sherif 37:10

Yeah, I mean, other places that even are there's not even there's not even a doctor on site. They're literally going down a script, like they're literally going just, I mean, I I think of it as a uh chefless restaurant, which basically means fast food, right? You are literally going down a script of just do these, you know, very mechanical, no ability to change anything. Whereas this is very much um we can change anything on the fly. I see something that I don't like there. I get a phone call from one of the techs saying, hey, saying you need to get eyes on this, we'll go there. I'll say, okay, can that, let's spend a bit more time here, and so on. So it's very much subject to you as a person.

Sam Miklos 37:45

What do you think if this tech was taken up and it because you're the only um clinic in Australia, is that correct, that's doing it to this level?

Dr Zane Sherif 37:53

Oh, to this level, yeah, to this level, absolutely.

Sam Miklos 37:56

So if this was taken up and more people were doing this, what impact would this have on the healthcare system?

Dr Zane Sherif 38:02

So the the cheapest way to deal with disease is at its earliest. Once we get into chronic disease, you are throwing bazillions of dollars on it. If we can stop a patient getting from like a small rumble to that chronic phase where you are lifelong medications, your quality of life has gone to gone out the door, if we can stop that, there's actually a massive saving to be had. Look, it will take some real deep thinking and new ideas and so on, but I I mean if you look at any of those sci-fi, if you look at any of those sci-fi things like Star Trek, etc., they're depicting medical nirvana. It's basically you get a wand that flies over you and tells you all the issues, and you just go, you know, that's basically where we're headed. Yeah, but and this is one, this is the first step maybe into that. Yeah. Um, even like how did the scan come about? So we have been doing cancer scans on MRI for for ages, like it's not it's not a new thing. So something happened in the last you know five, ten years where we've been able to say, okay, well, we've got good confidence that this is a cancer detecting monster, and now all we've all we've done is changed who we're scanning. The scan is actually a cancer scan. The difference is one thing, we've got two ways to look for cancer. We've got the contrast where we we give Ivy intravenous contrast and we see the lesion, if it's metabolically active, it'll actually pick it up, and then we it goes bright on the scan. And there's another thing called diffusion. So diffusion is a measure of hypercellularity. That means really dense. It's a loss of uh random water motion, and it's a measure of hypercellularity. So as we got better with diffusion and we showed that it was giving us the same results as the contrast, so now we've got diffusion and contrast are two ways to look, but and we would still do both on somebody who has known cancer, we would really try and get a good look and we'd throw all the tools at it, so the diffusion and the contrast. But in somebody like yourselves who are healthy and know known cancer, I can't risk giving you the dye in case you have an allergic reaction or some other side effect from the dye. But we've got good confidence now in the diffusion to pick up cancer. So now we've got this way to actually scan you, now using diffusion, um, without actually having to give you any IV nasty chemicals, um, with nearly the same results as if we actually had given you the contrast.

Kate Coomber 40:18

Do you hope for the future? We talked before about the barrier being time and money. So I think when you go and get scans now, you can choose quite often to go publicly or privately. I guess do you see a future where more and more people will be taking a proactive approach and realizing the cost is is okay?

Speaker 4 40:37

Correct.

Kate Coomber 40:38

Um and we were talking earlier about our children and what the future is for them, that you know, if you can get mammograms and everything else is this being subsidized. Is there a time, do you think, that there will be a subsidized version of this for the math?

Dr Zane Sherif 40:53

Oh so Medicare already has a whole body code. Like that there's already an MBS item code. It's for a TP53 gene mutation. You have to get signed off um by I think a clinical geneticist, a specialist physician. Um I'm not sure if there's another doctor, but there's a few hoops you have to run by, but you have to have that TP53 gene mutation, and Medicare will fund it. So and they and the they collaborated with I think seven of the uh colleges in Australia and they said this was a useful tool for that. So we already know I mean this thing is scientifically based. This isn't this isn't a pop-up store. Yeah. This is scientifically based and here for the long term, it's getting faster and more accurate year by year.

Kate Coomber 41:30

And I guess if we're talking about cost, do we just roughly talk about what we're talking about as well? Because it sounds like we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars per scan or something, and I know that it's not. Um, because then if you think about what you're paying in often reactive medicine, when something's how much you pay into the private system or whatever it might be, it really would equate to an annual.

Dr Zane Sherif 41:49

I mean, this starts at two and a half.

Kate Coomber 41:50

Two and a half thousand. I mean, how much do you like if you think about a coffee a day?

Sam Miklos 41:54

I think I went out. I was like, there's like five, well, a little bit more if you get one of those nice little icy things.

Kate Coomber 42:00

You might need surgery, you're paying at least a gap, it won't be 1,500.

Dr Zane Sherif 42:03

How much is it to get a mastectomy? And if you get an infection, it's like there's not two and a half thousand, it's twenty-five thousand. It's in fact, a breast scan on its own is about a thousand dollars. I mean, the cost of treating um like disease in its advanced stage, it's hundreds of thousands. I mean, we see it every day. We've all got friends who've cashed out their uh their super and are flying to Mexico and Germany. The cost of treating entrenched disease is through the roof. That's the whole thing. We're trying to stop you getting to that entrenched disease.

Sam Miklos 42:33

And it's a priority, right? You go like when you look at that, you can either spend it this way or you could prioritize your health if I do agree. Like the longevity piece that's attached to it as well. Yeah. Are you um like to get this out and to to have more uptake, is there more studies that are being done, or are there is it storytelling? Like what needs to happen?

Dr Zane Sherif 42:54

Look, it's it's it's gonna be costs. In Australia, we're very cost sensitive, right? And like as good as Medicare is, Medicare is a reactive, um, it's a basic service. It was never, I mean, if you you know, if think of Medicare, and I I don't want to disparage Medicare, but it is a it is a public service just like food. Um well, I don't think we have food stamps here, but food subsidies or uh public housing. It you know, the Medicare is not going to, you know, like um public housing, they're not gonna give you a beach house, you know, or or food assistance. They're not gonna give you lobster and caviar.

Kate Coomber 43:27

And they also find things, we've talked about this on previous episodes of diagnosing within the codes of things versus the why of why how to do it. Correct.

Dr Zane Sherif 43:35

Medicine is highly complex and inconvenient, you know, and it strikes you the least, the the worst possible times for your your busy life. Yeah. But so so again, so Medicare is a basic service. I mean, it I think it'll be decades before, uh not even decades, it'll be years before there's such a swell of um data from the journals that have shown that it actually is decreasing this. I mean, we we already know early disease detectives. Detection saves lives. That's why we have, you know, three or four. We've got the PAPSMEA testing, we've got the kit that you get looking for blood in your uh in your stool after the age of 50. We've got the lung cancer, we've got, you know, we've got lots of screening, and for that same reason, early detection saves lives. So we know early detection saves lives. But to get in those screening tools, it's got to pass the criteria for population-based screening. Like I said earlier, this will never, ever well, never say never, but in in the foreseeable 10 years, I cannot see this being part of the public um public purse because it's just too expensive. Now the scan, the cost of this scan is a measure of time and it's a measure of complexity. And the complexity then means you need more software and it takes longer to read and all that. But as that gets faster and faster, the cost of this will go down. Yeah. I just hope that it doesn't become a race to the bottom where somebody's saying we can do it in 15 minutes for 50 bucks. Yeah. Then the problem with that is this you are going to have a test, and as a punter, you may not know its deficiencies, and it may not have been explained to you. Then you get it, and you've got all this false confidence, and then you get a horrible, ominous symptom, right? A month later, you ignore it because you've got a test that told you, hey, you're all good. And then and again, you wear the consequence of that abbreviated scan or that cheap scan or that kind of you know headline grabbing um scan, and you go and do it, but you wear the consequence of its lack of robustness.

Kate Coomber 45:27

So what what does a consumer look for? Because there are a lot of companies doing full-body scan. How do you how do they know?

Dr Zane Sherif 45:35

Yeah.

Kate Coomber 45:35

Because they probably do think that they're getting the role.

Dr Zane Sherif 45:39

You're right. You're absolutely we are right now, like crypto, we're in the wild west of it. It's like, what do we do? I know, we're in the wild west of it. Yeah. I would say, anybody going, ask them, your radiologist, how many has reported, right? We've roughly got, oh I'll have to check the numbers, but we're just under a thousand, I think, at the moment. That's probably more than anyone in the country, because we've been doing it for the longest. You've got to make sure it's on a 3T because you get better signal to noise. Um, the next thing is, and this is probably the most important, back to that diffusion, the two ways, the two sequences to look for cancer. Because the other ones are the shape of things, and the other one is a measure of hypercellularity, which is what cancers are. They're very dense structures. So that diffusion at 3T has to be. So we've done diffusion for for years in the brain. We do it all the time. Everyone does it. The reason we do it in the brain, and we haven't been able to get it outside the brain, is because the skull keeps the brain, which is a big water sponge, in a relatively uh stable shape. It's not moving with respiration, etc. The second we are outside that, diffusion is so susceptible to any movement, breathing, coughing, clearing of the throat, etc., that when as we deploy it for the rest of the body, especially around where the pancreas is, yeah, that little white spot that I look on diffusion could be centimeters away from the organ. And I don't know which it's telling me there's a bright spot there, I can't tie it to an organ. So it has to be geometrically corrected. So your diffusion has to be geometrically corrected, and that's the that's the absolute key. And that sequence is 80% of all the scanning time. So anyone who's doing it in 15 minutes, 30 minutes, even an hour, they're skimping on that sequence. So, like I said, anybody can do a faster scan. Yeah, you're just scandalous. And there are some 3T providers in the states who emit the diffusion completely. So now it's just an anatomy. Now what's what I call it, just a body scan. Yeah. It's not even a cancer hunter, it is a body survey.

Kate Coomber 47:39

Is this happening around the world? You know, this is one healing Australia. Is it quite common?

Dr Zane Sherif 47:47

It is, yeah. The problem is it's been hijacked by oh, I don't know, tech bros who just want to scale it and have it in every corner. And the problem with that is as you scale, the quality goes down to the scale and the profits go up. So the only way to do this well is to do with small and slow. Good medicine in general is small and slow. The death of good medicine is fast and big. Yeah. Yes. Um and we're very much boutique oriented from that point of view.

Sam Miklos 48:15

If you uh if we look back and you get to 90, you know, because you're gonna live that that longevity is there. You'll be 90, I don't know. Strolling on the beach out there with a whole bunch of grandkids around you. Looking back on your legacy that you've left with MBI Health, what do you hope to have achieved for this?

Dr Zane Sherif 48:34

The return of small, slow medicine. I mean, just every like everyone I speak to and all my doctor colleagues, uh there's there's so much um there's so much misery in medicine. And it's because of the hijacking of medicine by hedge funds, by big business, the quality is gone. Like that that day, like a country practice, you know, where you kind of knew it, that's gone. That is completely gone. And it's such a shame because and that ties back into that whole um societal engagement. That's completely gone. I mean, like we're almost like a gym downstairs in the sense that we we know so many of our patients that just keep coming back and we know them by first name.

Sam Miklos 49:14

Yeah.

Dr Zane Sherif 49:14

Um, or they're texting me all the time.

Sam Miklos 49:16

Yeah, yeah.

Dr Zane Sherif 49:17

But yeah, so I I would love the return of small slow medicine because that is better medicine. You you're getting better results, you're getting earlier, better diagnoses. And I was saying to my team the other day, I said, I long for the day of a kidney stone or a gall stone. Now it's like there's a small, tiny little tumor blocking the appendix and causing appendicitis, not just a regular appendicitis, or it's layered complexity now. And we know that medicine is getting more and more complex because there's more stuff all around us. We're we're completely immersed in toxins and pollution and so on, yeah.

Sam Miklos 49:51

So it's not possible to get back to small cell medicine then?

Dr Zane Sherif 49:55

Look, I think it is. I think it and certainly in America, who were their phase shifted 10, 20 years ahead of us, they've gone through that corporate and now it's kind of coming back small again. And they're and but it has to come in the legal framework. So just like back in the early days, only a pharmacist could own the pharmacy, and that's obviously been hijacked now. But I think we're probably 10 years away, maybe 20 years away, from it coming, more legislation coming saying no, only small operators, only small doctors can own a practice and so on. I mean, it's not great for um for retiring because you want to sell your practice, but then I'll only be able to sell the practice, hopefully. And I don't care. I'm happy to sell my practice for peanuts to the next generation of radiologists. Yeah. Um, I don't need to sell it for big bucks to a to a big corporate. Um and if that's a sacrifice I have to make, so be it. At least we're having fun on the way.

Kate Coomber 50:42

Absolutely. So with every episode of It Takes Heart, CMR make a small donation to a charity of every guest choice. Is there a charity today that we can talk about?

Dr Zane Sherif 50:51

Absolutely, a medicine fonciers.

Sam Miklos 50:53

Yes, say that again, he said that's so beautiful. Yeah, say it differently. Well MSF MSF.

Dr Zane Sherif 51:02

But uh yeah, MSF. So I I love MSF. And uh, I mean, look, if we went in this big rat race, you know, I'd love to be working for free at a refugee camp. So they're doing the work I just can't do.

Speaker 4 51:12

Yeah.

Dr Zane Sherif 51:13

Um, and honestly, they are the bravest people in hot spots around the world who are just a massive. I mean, their life is worth as much as my life. They've they've spent as much on their life in medical school and so on, and their parents, and they're taking huge risks that I think most of us just couldn't take. I'm one of them, I just can't take that risk. But uh they're they're willing to park it and uh and just go into these war zones and and offer hope and care where they can. So certainly MSF here um would be the biggest charity, and certainly the one I give to the most.

Sam Miklos 51:44

Thank you, Zane. Thank you so much for your time today. Honestly, like I couldn't. There's so much you could just have kept talking, talking, talking. Lucky though, I'll be back here in a year. And now that I know Emran's texting you, I'll get that number as well.

Dr Zane Sherif 51:58

Absolutely.

Sam Miklos 51:59

No, there's just uh it's been an absolute pleasure as well just to go through the experience and you're doing some incredible work. And I really hope from this episode that just more people are aware about this great technology, this great team that you've got here at MBR.

Dr Zane Sherif 52:11

Appreciate it. It was a pleasure having you both.

Kate Coomber 52:18

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land of which we meet, who for centuries have shared ancient methods of healing and cared for their communities. We pay our respects to elders past and present.